Can the use of algorithms enhance judicial independence? Reflections in the context of The Hague Declaration

Abstract

The subject of this paper is an attempt to answer the question of whether the use of tools based on algorithms or artificial intelligence in the criminal process can strengthen the autonomy of courts. The author focuses solely on tools based on algorithms and, more precisely, on tools used in the course of making criminological prognosis in the course of proceedings for granting a convicted offender a conditional early release from serving the rest of the prison sentence. At the same time, he puts his considerations in a specific local and temporal context, more specifically – in the current legal system of the Republic of Estonia. The main conclusion of the article is that tools based on statistics should not be the sole basis for the decision-making body's assessment; they should be only one element of this assessment, an element that is only taken into account in the second instance. The most desirable system for making criminological prognoses should therefore be a mixed system containing, on the one hand, elements of the clinical method and, on the other hand, elements of the statistical method and, at the same time, a system which ensures that the results of algorithm-based tools are treated only as subsidiary arguments. Only then will judicial autonomy be properly safeguarded.