26 March 2025 – Warsaw
On 26 March 2025 I organised a lecture at the Department of International Criminal Procedure, Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw, Collegium Iuridicum I, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28 Warsaw, 8 PM CET.
The lecture’s title was: Protection of Children in Contemporary Criminal Proceedings – Achievements, Threats and Perspectives.
During that lecture (90 minutes) I presented the fruits of my research achievement obtained in the CEA Project concerning already available and possible for further development instruments of criminal proceedings aimed at providing the best possible protection of that participant of the procedure (poster included).
The main points of the lecture were:
1) place of the children wellbeing in the system of criminal procedural rules
2) possible conflict of priorities: child wellbeing versus the rights of the defendant
3) present legal regulation of Polish criminal proceedings allowing the usage of the new technologies in cases concerning children
4) new perspectives of the usage of the polygraph examination in cases concerning children
5) problems concerning issuing expert opinions in cases involving children
a. main areas of the experts’ analysis
b. the general problem of the quality of the experts’ opinions
c. the courts ability to evaluate experts’ opinions
d. the usage of new technologies by experts while issuing opinions
e. the division between expert’s own opinion and a mere report of AI analysis
6) de lege ferenda postulates concerning expert’s work in cases involving children in situations where AI instruments are used
7) conclusions
8) discussion
The lecture gathered circa 15 participants, especially members of the Department. In the discussion following my lecture several valuable remarks were presented by the participants. Among other, dr Aleksandra Komar-Nalepa presented her opinion of the risk of further automatization of expert work in criminal proceedings concerning evaluation of children wellbeing and potential threats of removing the actual decision process in such cases outside the court and outside human competences.
As a summary, an observation commonly accepted by the audience was presented that there is no doubt that new technologies can significantly improve the efficiency of proceedings in cases where the best interests of the child are at risk in various ways. This observation applies to both preparatory and judicial proceedings and also relates to data analysis and the implementation of more complex activities. At the same time, however, the realisation of their use is associated with numerous problems and threats, especially involving putting too much emphasis on the analytical products provided by AI instruments, where there may be po practical possibility of critical evaluation of the such instruments, not only by the court, but also by the expert, who may me marginalized to a role of a technician, operating AI engines.
Due to the delicate nature of some presented data (i.a. concerning the threats combined with child pornography) and my own experience, recording such type of event prevents some participants (especially students and young researches) from presenting their own opinions and from active participation in the discussion.
