Recent years have seen an explosion in technological innovation: from smart phones and mobile applications to artificial intelligence and machine learning and everything in-between, ICTs are changing the ways people interact with one another and the world.
These innovations are influencing the justice sector as well: around the world, justice technologies ranging from legal information websites to applications of generative artificial intelligence are evolving the delivery of justice services. However, despite the increasing frequency with which justice technologies are utilized, there is insufficient systemic understanding about how ICTs can be most effectively leveraged to improve the experiences of individuals with justice needs and ultimately advance people-centered justice.
The World Justice Project, in partnership with the World Bank Legal Vice Presidency and the Korean Legal Trust Fund, is pursuing a multi-stage project oriented towards supporting the use of justice technologies. As the first product of this collaboration, we published a mapping of justice technologies that follows a people-centered approach:
Access to Justice via Information and Communications Technology: A Literature Review
Informed by an extensive literature identification and review process, this report presents a comprehensive, people-centered analysis of existing research on justice technologies—the where, when, why, how, and by whom of their development and use. In the context of an ever-changing technological landscape, a people-centered analytical framework is critically important to ensure justice technologies effectively serve their purpose of improving justice outcomes.
Access to Justice via Information and Communications Technology: A Literature Review, leverages a people-centered analytical framework to assess existing research on justice technologies. We find that:
- Justice technologies are used on both the supply and demand sides of the justice system, offering opportunities for both services providers and users.
- There is scarce systematic understanding of how ICTs can be most effectively leveraged, particularly to serve people with justice problems.
- The benefits offered by justice technologies are not without notable risks and barriers.
- Justice technologies alone will not close the justice gap. When they are developed and implemented in a people-centered way—that is, taking people’s needs and experiences into consideration—they can support the advancement of access to justice.
Read the full report here:
WJP is leveraging the findings from the literature review to advance this project, diving deeper into understanding where, when, and how justice technologies can be used to improve access to justice, and how justice actors can make the most informed decisions around using these technologies.
Forthcoming research identifies, based on expert consultations and data from the WJP Global Legal Needs Survey, critical pain points in people’s justice journeys and explores the opportunities for justice technologies to help resolve them. Moreover, WJP is developing an assessment tool that guides decision making around the design and implementation of justice technologies oriented towards resolving those pain points. Stay tuned for these exciting products and the opportunity to provide feedback on a working version of the assessment tool.