The Digital Criminal Justice Project: Vulnerability and the Digital Subject (DE210100586)

Australian Research Council (ARC) funded Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)

Digital technologies, specifically audiovisual links and remote communication technologies, are  transforming the essential work of criminal courts and legal practice. Since COVID-19, such technologies have enabled virtual or remote hearings and new forms of digitalised justice.

This project has examined the impact of digitalised criminal justice on vulnerable users: vulnerable witnesses and vulnerable defendants.

AIMS

     1. Evaluate the interrelationship between digitalised criminal justice and vulnerability, asking: in what ways do videolinks and pre-recorded testimony assist or disadvantage vulnerable individuals in the criminal justice system?

     2. Conceptualise ‘digital vulnerability’ as a framework for understanding the new social solutions and potential harms that may arise when vulnerable individuals use videolinks to access the criminal justice system.

SIGNIFICANCE

Addresses the critical need to understand vulnerability in the digitalised legal environment, given:

     1. The increased use and normalisation of videolinks in courts and legal practice; and

     2. The disproportionate impacts of the criminal justice system on vulnerable individuals.

Informs policies, courts and legal practitioners regarding justice innovation and in understanding how digitalised justice:

     1. impacts equitable access to justice; and

     2. might be delivered while minimising negative impacts.

METHOD

A national study based on 175 fieldwork interviews and online surveys with judges, magistrates, defence lawyers, prosecutors and affiliated criminal justice professionals across all Australian capital cities as well as regional and remote centres. 

PI: Dr Carolyn McKay | Associate Dean (Research Education) | Associate Professor in Law, University of Sydney Law School

Project dates: 1 July 2021 - 31 December 2025.