Critical Case Studies:

In March 2026, the Council on Criminal Justice Task Force on Artificial Intelligence released Assessing AI for Criminal Justice: A User Decision Framework. Building on the panel’s Principles for the Use of AI in the Criminal Justice System, the framework provides guidance for responsible AI procurement and deployment in the criminal justice field and translates broad principles into practical, detailed actions for agencies and practitioners.

Adapting and extending the work of the framework, the Task Force has developed three case studies. They demonstrate the framework’s guidance in action across different AI tools and hypothetical use cases, with a focus on substantive decision-making considerations. The case studies are not intended to endorse, reject, or rate any specific vendor, product, or technology category in the abstract. Instead, they show how agencies and practitioners might reason through concrete AI questions using the framework’s step-by-step structure, responsive to the fact that the same technology may raise different questions depending on variables such as the user, purpose, population affected, data inputs, legal obligations, and available oversight capacity.

Each case study addresses a core criminal justice sector and was selected for its illustrative value when weighing its relevance for current and future field and technological developments.