Labour isn’t just pushing AI in policing — they want it in the courts as well

On 26 February, the Canary reported on the wrongful arrest of a British-Asian man due to racist AI tech. The story was a stark example of problems at the heart of Labour’s current push to use AI in the criminal justice system.

As part of that article, we mentioned justice minister David Lammy’s 24 February speech announcing the expansion of AI tech in the courts. This article takes a look at those plans — and examines why they’ll also produce discriminatory outcomes.

‘The justice system of the past’

In Lammy’s speech — delivered during a tour of Microsoft‘s AI facilities — the justice minister proudly announced that:

We are calling time on the justice system of the past

He described visiting a paperless court facility in Canada and feeling like a visitor from another time. He gushed about an AI conference in India, talking about using technology to help make human decisions.

Then, he moved on to announce Labour’s plans to up the use of AI in our failing courts. In particular, he talked about the potential of automated transcription software.

And last year, we piloted an AI tool in the Probation Service – Justice Transcribe. It records meetings between officers and offenders, removing the need for handwritten notes to be typed up later, so staff can concentrate on turning offenders’ lives around. That’s what they want to do.

The results have been transformational: over 150,000 meetings transcribed, and more than 25,000 hours of time saved. We’re testing transcription in the courts and tribunals based on the same technology, and in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber, some judges are using it to help formulate notes and write remarks.

We’re also piloting AI for legal advisors and district judges in the Magistrates’ Courts, to speed up case progression by transcribing material, and summarising their judgments. I want to see more AI initiatives like these.

Now, it would be easy to dismiss transcription as a relatively harmless facet of justice. After all, it’s not like the AI is making sentencing decisions.

However, there are already issues, even here — and they’re already in the courts. As legal advisers Farrer & Co explained: 

Although AI transcription tools are getting better all the time, they are unlikely to be 100% accurate. For example, in the Clarke case, an AI transcription tool had repeatedly mis-transcribed the claimant’s name, “Noel”, as “no”.

Generally, more mistakes are likely to be made when dealing with audio involving loud background noise or strong accents. In 2024, it was reported that Whisper – an AI-powered transcription tool provided by OpenAI – had even been “hallucinating” (ie completely making up chunks of text or even entire sentences).

On the note of accents, studies have shown that automated transcription tech fails with Black people’s voices in particular. What could possibly go wrong using that tech in courts in which Black people are already victimised?

Labour has ‘£12m in additional funding’ for AI

Adding insult to injury, Lammy also announced that his party are putting major cash behind this AI push. He stated that:

we are going to invest more in our in-house Justice AI Unit – a specialist team within my department, forward-deployed to the frontline, working with staff to tackle the challenges they face.

Over £12 million in additional funding in the next financial year will expand our AI capabilities, putting this powerful tool, finally, into the hands of staff. But we’re going to go even further, strengthening our relationship with Microsoft and others, piloting the solutions of UK-based start-ups, harnessing industry top talent to work more closely with us, and launching a Justice AI academy and fellowship programme so that we can bring in the best graduates and AI engineers, creating an unprecedented partnership between the public and private sectors – one which can revolutionise a justice system in desperate need of renewal.

So, not only are we using AI for transcription, we’re also looking desperately for anything else we can jam it into. Oh, and we’re palling up with genocidal businesses like Microsoft, into the bargain.

A wrecking ball to the courts

In the backdrop to all of Lammy’s nakedly discriminatory plans is the UK’s mounting court backlog. It’s this issue that he’s using to justify rolling back the public right to a trial by jury.

And, just as with the AI technology in the justice system, Lammy is well aware that this will exacerbate existing racial inequality. He just doesn’t care.

In response to the plans to strip back jury trials, over 100 lawyers — including 24 King’s Counsel — wrote an open letter setting out their objections. In amongst them, the legal specialists questioned why Labour was using vast amounts of money to create new courts and pay new judges, rather than funding the existing system.

The same argument applies to Labour’s AI plans. Why, if we have £12m to pay for possible AI in the future, can we not use it for the courts as they stand? And, for that matter, why does Labour seemingly have such deep pockets only when it comes to paying for racist courts and racist technology?

Featured image via the Canary