Smart technology promises safer prisons—but threatens fundamental human rights
Across Europe, a technological revolution is reshaping incarceration. “Smart prisons” powered by artificial intelligence are no longer science fiction. Finland launched its first Smart Prison at Hämeenlinna women’s facility in March 2021, expanding to two additional facilities by 2023. In October 2024, the Council of Europe issued comprehensive recommendations to its 46 member states on AI in prisons and probation services.
These systems promise enhanced security, optimized resources, and data-driven rehabilitation. Yet for criminal defense lawyers and human rights advocates, a critical question emerges: Can algorithmic prison management respect the fundamental rights that form the bedrock of European justice?
The Digital Panopticon: What AI Prisons Actually Do
Modern smart prison systems deploy AI across every dimension of detention. In some Eastern jurisdictions, intelligent CCTV detects unusual behavior and wristbands collect continuous data on prisoners, while Northern European approaches use AI primarily as a rehabilitation tool, including virtual reality programs for psychological support.
Finland’s Smart Prison concept provides each prisoner with a personal cell device containing software for online communication and management of affairs inside—and to a limited extent, outside—the prison. Prisoners access education, healthcare, and maintain family contact through these systems. The Finnish model has attracted significant international interest, with consultations from prison services across Europe.
Beyond rehabilitation tools, AI systems increasingly make consequential decisions: assessing recidivism risk, recommending parole eligibility, determining housing classifications, and selecting individuals for rehabilitative programs. Machine learning models analyze behavioral data to predict which prisoners pose security threats or merit early release.
The appeal is obvious. Prisons face chronic overcrowding and staff shortages. AI promises objectivity where human judgment might fail. But as criminal defense lawyers know well, efficiency is not justice—and objectivity is not guaranteed.
The Black Box Problem: When No One Can Explain the Decision
The fundamental flaw in AI-driven prison management is opacity. Most commercial AI systems operate as “black boxes”—their decision-making processes remain proprietary, technically complex, and often inscrutable even to their designers.
When an algorithm determines whether a prisoner receives early release or restrictive housing placement, we confront a rule-of-law crisis. How can detainees exercise their right to challenge decisions they cannot understand? How can lawyers cross-examine an algorithm?
The Council of Europe’s October 2024 Recommendation CM/Rec(2024)5 emphasizes that all processes related to AI in prison and probation services must be transparent to public scrutiny and comply with international legal standards, including the European Convention on Human Rights. Yet transparency requirements often collide with trade secret protections.
The European Court of Human Rights has not directly ruled on AI in prisons, but Article 6 ECHR’s guarantee of fair trial proceedings—and fair post-conviction processes—demands explainable reasoning and effective remedies. The principle of equality of arms requires a fair balance between opportunities afforded to parties, and meaningful information about decision-making logic.
Your Data, Forever: The Privacy Minefield
AI-enabled prison healthcare systems are already operational. Smart prisons are data-intensive enterprises. Sensors, cameras, and monitoring systems generate continuous streams of information about inmates’ locations, communications, behaviors, and biometric identifiers.
Yes, individuals in detention have reduced privacy expectations. But reduced is not eliminated. The General Data Protection Regulation’s principles of data minimization, purpose limitation, and proportionality remain fully applicable.
Recent Court of Justice of the European Union decisions in December 2023 and February 2025 clarified that Article 22 GDPR’s restrictions on automated decision-making apply even when third parties provide algorithmic assessments that decisively influence final decisions. These principles extend to prison contexts, requiring clear and intelligible explanations to enable individuals to assess the accuracy and fairness of data processing.
More troubling is mission creep. Data collected for security purposes may be repurposed for risk assessment, disciplinary decisions, or shared with law enforcement. The detained individual becomes a permanent subject of algorithmic surveillance, with every movement and utterance feeding systems that will judge their rehabilitation for years to come.
Bias Encoded: When Algorithms Perpetuate Injustice
Perhaps the most insidious risk is algorithmic bias. AI systems learn from historical data—and when that data reflects societal prejudices, algorithms replicate and amplify them.
The evidence is damning. ProPublica’s 2016 analysis of over 10,000 criminal defendants in Broward County, Florida examined the COMPAS recidivism prediction tool. The findings revealed that Black defendants were incorrectly judged as higher risk far more often than white defendants, while white defendants were more likely to be incorrectly flagged as low risk.
Even after controlling for criminal history, age, and gender, Black defendants were 77% more likely to be assigned higher risk scores for violent recidivism and 45% more likely to be assigned higher risk scores for general recidivism. Black defendants who did not reoffend were nearly twice as likely to be classified as higher risk compared to white counterparts.
In prison contexts, these biases compound existing inequalities. When AI systems trained on historical data predict that certain demographic groups pose higher security risks or have lower rehabilitation potential, they systematically deny those individuals opportunities. The system becomes self-fulfilling: those denied opportunities struggle more upon release, validating the algorithm’s initial prediction.
The Council of Europe’s 2024 Recommendation specifically requires that prison and probation services implement measures to avoid biases against individuals or groups and prevent discrimination, particularly in risk assessment. Article 14 ECHR prohibits discrimination in the enjoyment of Convention rights—algorithmic bias does not escape this obligation.
Human Dignity in the Digital Cell
Beyond specific legal violations, AI prisons implicate human dignity itself—the foundational principle underlying all human rights law.
When we subject incarcerated individuals to comprehensive algorithmic surveillance and management, we risk reducing them to data points, to risk scores, to patterns in a machine learning model. Rehabilitation requires recognizing the capacity for human growth and change. It demands individualized assessment accounting for context, circumstance, and the irreducible complexity of human motivation.
An algorithm, regardless of sophistication, cannot capture these dimensions. It identifies correlations in data, but correlation is not understanding.
Moreover, the psychological impact of total surveillance—knowing that every action feeds into systems assessing your worthiness for freedom—constitutes its own harm beyond the deprivation of liberty the court imposed.
The Rights-Based Path Forward
I do not advocate blanket rejection of technology in prisons. Well-designed systems could genuinely improve conditions—identifying inmates in mental health crisis, optimizing educational resources, or reducing guard violence through accountability.
The question is how to harness these possibilities while safeguarding rights.
Transparency Requirements
The Council of Europe Recommendation requires that technologies should not replace prison staff but rather assist them in their work. Any AI system substantially affecting prisoners’ rights must be subject to independent audit. Algorithms, training data, and decision-making processes should be explainable and challengeable. Proprietary concerns cannot override fundamental rights.
Meaningful Human Oversight
AI outputs should inform human decisions, not replace them. A qualified professional must review algorithmic recommendations, consider individual circumstances the algorithm cannot capture, and bear ultimate responsibility for decisions. The Council of Europe explicitly states that AI should assist staff, not substitute for human interaction with offenders.
Rigorous Impact Assessment
The Council of Europe emphasizes that AI use should be strictly necessary and avoid adverse effects on the privacy and well-being of offenders and staff. Any prison AI system should undergo human rights impact assessment, bias testing, proportionality analysis, and data protection compliance before deployment.
Effective Remedies
European Court of Justice case law establishes that individuals must receive sufficiently clear and intelligible explanations to enable them to assess the accuracy and fairness of data processing. Prisoners must have clear procedures to challenge algorithmic decisions, access their data profiles, and request human review. Legal aid should extend to contesting AI-driven decisions about parole, classification, and programming.
Technology Must Serve Justice—Not Replace It
As criminal justice systems embrace algorithmic decision-making, we must remember that these systems exist to serve human rights, not optimize efficiency metrics.
Smart prisons may generate impressive statistics—reduced incidents, lower operational costs, data-driven dashboards for administrators. But if these gains come at the cost of opacity, discrimination, and dehumanization, we have built something fundamentally incompatible with a rights-respecting society.
The detained person looking at the camera feeding an algorithmic risk assessment is not a problem to be optimized. They are a rights-holder, entitled to dignity, fair process, and the possibility of redemption.
No algorithm can see that. No system, however “smart,” can replace the human judgment that lies at the heart of justice.
Before we build the prisons of tomorrow, we must ensure they are compatible with the rights that endure for all time.
About the Author
Alexis Anagnostakis is a criminal defense lawyer with 25 years of experience practicing in Athens, Greece, and serves as Human Rights Officer for the European Criminal Bar Association (ECBA). He specializes in digital rights, AI in criminal proceedings, and international human rights advocacy.
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