- Conference
- 2024 Police, Probation and CAFCASS Conference
- Date
- 13 June 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in policing, probation and CAFCASS. Conference believes that AI can bring opportunities for our members in the workplace but recognises that there are also risks which need to be properly understood and managed. There is a real danger that AI is introduced in ways that might threaten job security, career opportunities, and equality and diversity outcomes for members in the Police and Justice Service Group.
Conference further notes that:
1)In September 2023, National Police Chiefs Council published ‘A Covenant for the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Policing’. The Covenant sets out the following AI functions which are being used already by police forces – artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced data analytics.
2. According to the NPCC Covenant, most AI in policing is focused on workforce and resource planning including tasks such as live triage of 999/111 calls and automation of data quality assurance tasks. NPCC recognise: ‘…the need to maintain public confidence through standards, an ethical framework, and independent oversight.’
3. NPCC propose a set of principles to ensure that the use of AI in policing is lawful, transparent, explainable, responsible, accountable and robust. NPCC also recognise that the use of AI must comply with non-discriminatory practice.
4. In an article for the Confederation of European Probation entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Probation Services’ Professor Mike Nellis sets out that: ‘AI has far more comprehensive implications for probation services than electronic monitoring, not least in the size, structure and skillset of the workforce, as well as the transformation of supervisory practices themselves.’
5. Risk management is one of the most important roles played by probation staff and it is likely that predictive technology available via AI will begin to offer new opportunities, and present new risks, for the Probation Service going forward, in this and in other key tasks
Conference is concerned that the increasing use of AI in policing, probation and CAFCASS has the potential to automate work currently undertaken by our members, lead to disproportionate impacts on staff with protected characteristics, increase digital surveillance of our members whilst at work, threaten our members’ data protection rights and raise the risk of the privatisation of data.
Conference therefore calls upon the Service Group Executive to work with each of the Service Group sector committees to:
6. Seek to agree a UNISON Police and Justice strategy on the implementation of AI to cover all the sectors covered by the Service Group
7. The Service Group strategy to seek to cover the following areas: transparency, job substitution, threats to equalities, protection of pay and conditions, surveillance, data protection rights, privatisation, shared rewards for employers and employees, reinvestment of cost savings, training and development opportunities, monitoring (non-exhaustive list)
8. Open formal discussions with Police, Probation and CAFCASS employers to seek to establish collective agreements to protect our members’ interests in relation to the introduction/expansion of AI in the workplace