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   AI and the Future of Law Enforcement: the risks of perfectly enforcing   
   imperfect laws   
      
   Date:   
   Thu, 01 May 2025 14:20:42 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   Enforcing laws using AI could transform society, but raises concerns about   
   fairness, privacy, and freedom.   
      
   FULL STORY   
   ======================================================================   
      
   For as long as there have been laws, theres been lawbreaking.    
      
   And for just as long, much of that lawbreaking has gone unnoticed,    
   undetected, or unenforced.    
      
   From small-time tax evasion and regulatory violations to more serious crimes,   
   our legal and enforcement systems have always operated under the assumption   
   that not every infraction will be caught, let alone punished.    
      
   But what happens when almost everything is knowable, detectable, and   
   enforceable  all the time?    
      
   This is not a hypothetical question. Its a future that is increasingly within   
   reach.   
      
   AI-powered enforcement    
      
   Advances in artificial intelligence , combined with ubiquitous surveillance,   
   data aggregation, and predictive analytics, are rapidly closing the gap   
   between what people do and what the state or private enforcers (like    
   insurers, employers, and technology platforms) know about it.    
      
    AI -powered enforcement has the potential to make rules  from traffic laws    
   to environmental regulations to financial reporting requirements  enforceable   
   at a level no human system ever could.    
      
   Todays enforcement regimes are constrained by human capacity, resource   
   limitations, and the sheer scale of human activity.    
      
   There simply arent enough police officers, IRS auditors, building inspectors,   
   or compliance officers to monitor every infraction.    
      
   Even in the most highly-regulated sectors like banking or healthcare,   
   enforcement operates on a sampling basis  regulators audit a small fraction    
   of cases and rely on whistleblowers or patterns of harm to trigger deeper   
   investigations.   
      
   The enforcement gap    
      
   This enforcement gap creates space for:    
      
   - Minor lawbreaking that everyone does, like jaywalking or tax underreporting.   
      
   - Strategic rule-bending by corporations confident that the cost of   
   non-compliance will be lower than the profit it generates.    
      
   - Informal economies and workarounds in communities where strict legal   
   compliance is impractical or unaffordable.    
      
   In other words, incomplete enforcement isnt unintentional  its a built-in   
   buffer between the idealism of law and the pragmatism of real life:  It   
   reflects the gap between the formal rules and the messy reality of how people   
   and businesses actually live and operate.   
      
   What AI promises    
      
   AI promises to upend this dynamic in several ways:    
      
    1. Mass surveillance: Modern AI systems can process vast streams of video,   
   sensor data, social media activity, transaction records, and communications.   
   Unlike human enforcers, AI can integrate all these data sources into coherent   
   profiles, spotting patterns and anomalies in real-time and nearly perfect   
   precision. A future where every movement in public space, every business   
   transaction, and every online interaction is automatically monitored and   
   assessed for legality is increasingly plausible.    
      
    2. Predictive and preemptive enforcement: AI doesnt just detect violations   
   it can predict them. Machine learning models trained on historical violations   
   can flag likely offenders or anticipate where breaches will occur. This   
   transforms enforcement from a reactive process into a predictive and   
   preventative one. Imagine an AI system that identifies risky businesses or   
   individuals and nudges them toward compliance before violations occur  or   
   simply pre-emptively fines them based on the probability theyll break the   
   rules.    
      
    3. Automated enforcement at scale: AI systems dont get tired. They can   
   enforce every rule, everywhere, all the time. This could turn what are now   
   low-risk offenses  jaywalking, minor tax errors, small regulatory missteps   
   into near-certainties for detection and sanction.    
      
    4. Privatized enforcement ecosystems: Its not just governments. Insurance   
   companies, banks, landlords, employers, and platforms could all adopt AI   
   enforcement systems to monitor contractual compliance, workplace behavior, or   
   loan covenants. When combined with always-on monitoring, this creates a web    
   of privately enforced micro-compliance regimes, each with its own penalties   
   and incentives. The societal implications    
      
   If AI makes laws and rules enforceable at near-100% rates, the consequences   
   for society would be profound  and not all positive. These consequences   
   include:    
      
    1. The end of informal economies: Many communities, particularly    
   lower-income ones, rely on informal economies that blur the line between    
   legal and illegal activity. From street vending without a permit to   
   off-the-books construction work, these economies function because enforcement   
   is incomplete. Total enforcement would collapse this informal safety net,   
   often without offering viable alternatives.    
      
    2. The criminalization of everyday life: Laws are written with the    
   assumption that not all violations will be punished. As a result, many laws   
   are overbroad, technically criminalizing common behavior  but rarely    
   enforced. If AI changes that enforcement probability from 1% to 99%, everyday   
   life could become a minefield of minor violations, each triggering fines,   
   penalties, or worse.    
      
    3. Disparities in enforcement scope and targeting: Even with AI, enforcement   
   systems are built by humans  and inherit their biases. Which laws are   
   prioritized for enforcement, and which populations are most heavily    
   monitored, will still reflect political and economic power dynamics. AI could   
   create a veneer of neutrality, while in practice concentrating enforcement on   
   marginalized communities or politically disfavored activities.    
      
    4. Compliance as a full-time job: If businesses and individuals are subject   
   to always-on monitoring and hyper-enforcement, staying compliant could become   
   a full-time job . Entire industries of compliance assistants, AI compliance   
   dashboards, and personal legal monitoring services could arise, adding   
   friction and cost to every aspect of life.    
      
    5. The death of proportionality: Human enforcers have discretion. They can   
   give warnings, ignore trivial violations, or apply common sense to ambiguous   
   cases. AI enforcers, especially when operating autonomously, are far less   
   likely to exercise that kind of judgment. This could create a legal   
   environment where the letter of the law is enforced with machine precision,   
   but with no regard for context or fairness.   
      
   Is this a future we want?    
      
   The prospect of AI-enforced legal perfection raises a fundamental question:    
   Is the goal of law to achieve perfect compliance, or to balance order with   
   freedom, fairness, and practicality?    
      
   Laws are not sacred truths. They are human creations, shaped by politics,   
   economics, and culture. They evolve as society changes. If AI locks in   
   existing legal regimes and enforces them with mechanical rigor, it could   
   stifle innovation, crush dissent, and make laws less adaptable to social   
   change.    
      
   The enforcement gap  the space between law on the books and law in action  is   
   often where society negotiates its real values. Closing that gap with AI    
   could mean the end of that negotiation, replacing it with automated    
   obedience.    
      
   There are, of course, benefits to better enforcement  fewer dangerous    
   products on shelves, fewer tax cheats, fewer environmental violations. But    
   the danger lies in forgetting that the purpose of enforcement is not just to   
   punish, but to serve justice  which sometimes means turning a blind eye,   
   showing mercy, or allowing room for ambiguity.    
      
   As AI enforcement spreads, we must ask: Are we building a system that serves   
   justice, or one that serves only the law?    
      
   Because if AI gives us perfect enforcement of imperfect laws, the result wont   
   be a more just society  just a more unforgiving one.    
      
    This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel   
   where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry   
   today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not   
   necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in   
   contributing find out more here:   
   https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro   
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/pro/ai-and-the-future-of-law-enforcement-the-risks-o   
   f-perfectly-enforcing-imperfect-laws   
      
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