The Director of the Institute of Criminology, Prof. Aleš Završnik, is the recipient of the ESC European Journal of Criminology Best 2021 Article award in recognition of his article“Algorithmic justice: Algorithms and big data in criminal justice settings”, published in issue 18/5 (pp 623-642) of the European Journal of Criminology (EJC).
The Awards Ceremony took place during the ESC Conference in Málaga, Spain (21 to 24 September 2022).
From the award committee recommendation to the ESC Executive Board:
“Ales Završnik’s paper draws scholarly attention to a contemporary topic which is largely overlooked but critically important to emerging criminal justice practices. The paper is broad to the point of multidisciplinarity in scope, presenting an inventory of possible ways algorithms and big data could be and are being used across diverse areas of criminal justice and law, with the potential to influence, and in some instances, already actively influencing, the identification, adjudication, management, and treatment of offenders. In doing so Završnik’s paper raises many critical points regarding the efficacy, reliability, and ethics of these approaches, identifying and detailing an array of important issues which will no doubt inspire and underpin future empirical research.
Overall, the jury felt Završnik’s paper best exemplifies the aims of the European Journal of Criminology, and the European Society of Criminology which it represents, to foster scholarly debate about topics and practices in European criminology and criminal justice, especially those which may be both fundamental and radical in shaping our perspectives on criminal justice and how we address the problem of crime.”
In addition to the excellence recognised by the jury, Dr Završnik’s article, Algorithmic justice: Algorithms and big data in criminal justice settings, is also one of the most cited papers in the journal over the last three years. The open-access article is also the most read and downloaded article (more than 24,000 times) during the evaluation period, surpassing the work of even the most renowned criminology institutes in the world.
