Managing risks, passing over harms? A commentary on the proposed EU AI Regulation in the context of criminal justice

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems for both crime prevention and control have been in use for several decades although they have in recent years become the subject of growing criminological attention. Despite its transformative potential for societies, AI in general has long existed in a normative void and has been subject to limited regulation and control. The recent draft of the EU AI Regulation can thus be welcomed as the first comprehensive effort to regulate AI in an attempt to set regional, and potentially global, standards. The approach adopted in the Regulation, however, does not seem to adequately address some of the major concerns surrounding AI when it comes, for instance, to its use in criminal justice arenas. This short intervention discusses how a different approach, focusing on the social harms at stake rather than technological risks, could be useful for overcoming some of the limitations of current regulatory attempts.