Computer Assistance for, or Insights into, Organisational Aspects

Abstract

We first consider computer help for organising tasks relevant for managing the evidence. We consider the Lund procedure, as well as a few tools: CaseNote, MarshalPlan, and from Italy’s judiciary, Daedalus. We develop in particular a discussion of the latter, which is a tool for the examining magistrate and then the prosecution. We then turn to criminal justice information systems, and discuss prosecutorial vs. judiciary discretion. We discuss facets of evaluating costs and benefits, beginning with the costs and benefits while preparing a case (discussing, in turn, the rules of evidence in terms of economic rationality, Alvin Goldman’s concept of epistemic paternalism, the Litigation Risk Analysis method, and bargaining in relation to game theory). We then turn to evaluating the effects of obtaining or renouncing a piece of evidence, then to the benefits, costs, and dangers of argumentation, and finally to the costs and benefits of digital forensic investigations. Next, we discuss Bromby’s ADVOKATE, a tool for assessing eyewitness suitability and reliability (we also consider the Turnbull rules, and further elaborate on taxonomies of factors). In the section about policing, we consider organisational aspects of intelligence, and the handling of suspects, and deal in turn with organisational problems of police intelligence systems, with handling the suspects (equipment, techniques, and crucial problems), with polygraph tests and their controversial status, with the evidentiary value of self-incriminating confessions being culture-bound rather than universal in juridical cultures, and with computerised identity parades (lineups) and concerns about identity parades. This chapter concludes with a section (by Jonathan Yovel) on relevance, in relation to legal formalism as well as to logic formalism and artificial intelligence. A refutation is proposed, of the argument from the distinction between relevance and admissibility.