Digital records challenge forgiveness in criminal justice decisions
The Imperishable Record, Forgiveness, and the Future of Criminal Justice
Computers and SocietyArtificial Intelligence
Summary
Digital technology can keep records of wrongdoing forever, and AI can keep using these records to affect a person's future. This means people might always be seen as defined by past mistakes, without chance to move on. The authors argue this risks making true forgiveness impossible and suggest new rights to limit how long old records can impact someone's life and to allow re-evaluation based on personal growth. Their proposals aim to balance justice with fairness in the digital age.
What this means in practice
- •For criminal justice policymakers: Design policies that limit how long digital criminal records impact decisions on employment, housing, and other life opportunities.
- •For legal technology developers: Create tools that support rights to reassess and limit the use of old criminal records in AI-driven decision systems.
A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.
Authors
Mark Fenwick, Paulius Jurcys, Sebastian Porsdam Mann
Abstract
Digital technologies can preserve records of wrongdoing indefinitely, and AI can give those records continuing influence over a person's future. We describe this condition as the eternal data present and argue that it threatens the possibility of forgiveness. In criminal justice, formal punishment has an end, whereas the harms caused by the continued use of criminal records may not. Drawing on Hegel's account of the "hard heart" and Arendt's account of the irreversibility of action, we distinguish two dangers that digital systems can combine. People may be permanently identified with what they have done, and acts that cannot be undone may continue to determine what happens to them. We propose a right to remain unfinished, supported by rights to limits on the weight given to older records, to re-evaluation in light of personal change, to reassessment of inferences that affect their lives, and to time limits on the use of records in specified decisions. These proposals extend the ethics of AI beyond accuracy, transparency, and non-discrimination to address how long past wrongdoing should be allowed to govern a person's life.