Just Technology, or Technological Injustice?

• In Event: Vulnerability and Punishment

Abstract

One of the more striking recent miscarriages of justice has been that perpetrated by the UK Post Office when subpostmasters and subpostmistresses were prosecuted for fraud that actually arose from malfunctioning software. Over 700 were victimised by the Post Office, losing their homes and their livelihoods, with some even facing incarceration. In this paper I consider how best to make sense of this travesty in criminological terms. I consider how far a zemiological approach might be helpful but conclude that, aside from its utility in identifying certain personal harms suffered by post masters it lacks the resources at present to address the bigger picture here - the culpabilities of technology itself in what happened. To this end, I develop a concept of technological justice, rooted in explaining how the ‘technological solutionism’ which increasingly pervades our institutions threatens the very process of justice itself.

Author

• Michael R. McGuire, University of Surrey