2023 Criminal Law CPD Series:

Digital vulnerability: Vulnerable individuals and remote access technologies in justice

Ethics & professional responsibility
Professional skills
Practice Management

CPD Points: 1.5

About

This seminar will focus on the use of remote access technologies, such as audiovisual links, when working with vulnerable individuals in the justice system, and the developing concept of ‘digital vulnerability’. The seminar will draw on Dr McKay’s current Australian Research Council (‘ARC’) funded research and examine the multiple layers of vulnerability that individuals may experience while involved in legal matters. It will present preliminary findings from initial fieldwork interviews with lawyers and judicial officers that reveal critical perspectives on the impacts of digitalisation on vulnerable people in the justice system. While the research project and findings centre on the criminal justice system, many of the issues are equally relevant to legal practitioners working with vulnerable people in civil matters.

Presenter

Dr Carolyn McKay is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney Law School where she teaches Criminal Law, Civil & Criminal Procedure and Digital Criminology. She is CoDirector of the Sydney Institute of Criminology.

Carolyn is recognised for her research into technologies in justice, specifically her empirical research into prisoners’ experiences of accessing justice from a custodial situation by audio visual links, published in her monograph,The Pixelated Prisoner: Prison video links, court ‘appearance’ and the justice matrix (2018) Routledge. During the period July 2021 – June 2024, Carolyn will undertake her ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) ‘The Digital Criminal Justice Project: Vulnerability and the Digital Subject’.

Carolyn serves on the NSW Bar Association Innovation & Technology Committee and served on the 2019 NSW Law Society Legal Technologies Committee. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford 2019 and for 3 months at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Spain 2013-14. Carolyn has previously consulted on anti-dumping trade disputes and indirect taxation, working in both Sydney and Tokyo, and she also has a digital media/visual arts practice.