Remote Access Technologies, Clinical Evaluations of People-in-Prison and Digital Vulnerability

Abstract

Psychiatric and psychological clinical assessment reports are presented in Australian courts for a range of significant legal proceedings including sentencing; when the state seeks to extend detention or supervision orders of high-risk offenders; and in mental health proceedings. In these contexts, clinical assessments play an epistemic role in constructing people-in-prison and, increasingly, medical professionals are conducting these assessments using remote access technologies such as audiovisual links. This article examines how digitalizsation processes in the criminal justice system are altering modes of conducting assessments of a vulnerable population: people-in-prison. Despite the growing ubiquity of remote clinical assessments of people-in-prison, this article finds, through content analysis of court decisions and a theoretical framework of digital criminology and digital vulnerability, some reservations regarding the remote mode.