The Future of Justice: Navigating AI’s Ethical and Legal Maze In India’s Criminal Justice System

With India going digital, there is no aspect left that has not been influenced by digital technology. “artificial intelligence (AI) “has become a major tool to transform the criminal justice system. All these methods, from predictive policing to face recognition to courtroom legal research and AI-facilitated judicial decision-making, are being quickly incorporated into police procedures and court processes. But the use of AI in such a sensitive and vast field is significant from the moral, legal, and constitutional standpoints. This research examines the convoluted interaction of AI with the Indian criminal justice framework, weighing the advantages, the danger, and the gaps in the rules of its usage. The article starts discussing existing and future uses of AI in Indian policing, prosecution, and adjudication. It identifies projects like the “Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), the Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS)”, and experiments currently underway using AI-based crime mapping. These advances have a potential in terms of improving efficiency, decluttering backlogs, and supporting investigation but also raise serious issues related to privacy, transparency, and fairness. The primal question of this research is the ethical and legal dilemma posed by AI in the framework of justice. Algorithmic bias, data protection failures, transparency of decision-making mechanisms ("black box" issue), and compromising human accountability are the primary concerns. The research enlists both Indian constitutional values and global legal norms and identifies the threats of reproducing and exacerbating already existing systemic inequities through AI mechanisms devoid of adequate monitoring and authentication. Based on a doctrinal and comparative examination, this paper assesses regulatory models and jurisprudence of other jurisdictions like the EU and the United States with a view to drawing lessons for India.