I wrote recently about Jury Selection software, which was used to supplement human decisions on jury selection. China has gone a step further, and actually hands out court sentences via software. Of course, things are not quite so cut-and-dried as they may seem.
The Zichuan District Court in east China’s Shandong province has installed programs on judges’ computers that provide advice on the proper verdicts in criminal cases, the state-run China Daily reported. The move appears to be aimed at ensuring standardized decisions and addressing common complaints that China’s judges are ill-trained, corrupt and make arbitrary rulings. Source: Yahoo! News
So, the decisions are still finalized by humans, but the program gives out what it feels are appropriate sentences. The words “ensuring standardized decisions”, “ill-trained, corrupt” give a peek at what’s really on the minds of China’s government, in using this software.
Still, I would not be too happy if there were bugs in the software and I was a defendent!
Tags: technology, China, Government, Court, Judge
