Project
Digital forensic EVIdence (DEVICES): towards Common European Standards in antifraud administrative and criminal investigations
DEVICES aims at developing a comparative research project on the rules for conducting digital forensic operations in antifraudadministrative and criminal investigations.
Digital technology, with its globalized dimension, represents today a challenging factor that still founds no adequate responses innational or supranational legal frameworks, a context that risks to undermine the efficiency of most investigation, both administrative and criminal, and to sensibly reduce the scope of defence rights and guarantees. Member States struggle to establish technical and legal rules able to guarantee the integrity of digital evidence and secure its admissibility both in domestic and in transnational proceedings (a profile now even more pressing in light of Directive 2014/41 onthe European Investigation Order) as well as effective paradigms for the defence rights. In this context, patchy and unclear set of rules make the management of gathered digital evidence difficult and often unpredictable. That also exacerbates the enormous deficiencies existing in evidence sharing rules that connect administrative to criminal investigations in the antifraud matter (and not only in the latter).
For further information see the website: https://site.unibo.it/devices/en.
***
The Project (CrossJustice)
The protection of fundamental rights for persons accused or suspected of a crime is one of the main aims of the EU policy in the area of justice. However, the effective protection of such rights throughout the EU is heavily affected by the highly varying legal frameworks which characterize Member States regulation on procedural rights in criminal proceedings. In this context, legal actors often struggle to identify which legislation and therefore which procedural rights are applicable to persons accused or suspected of a crime in specific cases, both due to linguistic barriers and the peculiarities of different national legal systems.
This situation persists also after the introduction of the EU Directives derived from the Stockholm Programme, aiming at creating a certain level of harmonized rules on the matter.
Firstly, such directives often provide only a very minimal level of protection, and tackle only specific phases of the criminal proceeding. Secondly, the application of such directives at the national level is often further reducing the impact of the EU acquis due to incorrect or incomplete implementation or to the persistence of different interpretations given to criminal procedural rights by national courts.
The Project aims to tackle the issues described above identifying critical gaps and solutions in a comparative perspective, in order to improve the efficiency of judicial systems and their cooperation, thanks to information and communication technology. We thus propose to develop CrossJustice, an online platform for advice and support on the effectiveness of procedural rights providing a free service, mainly directed to legal professionals, but accessible to law students, NGOs and all EU citizens.
The CrossJustice platform will provide a unique contribution to address information needs pertaining to procedural rights, by delivering A) a free of charge and updated information and advisory service directed to legal professionals (lawyers, magistrates, and public servants), but also accessible to law students and citizens, and B) capacity building for legal professionals and law students.
The CrossJustice platform provides and innovative architecture with the aim of providing support with regard to:
1. the compliance of national instruments implementing EU directives with the EU acquis.
2. the compatibility between national frameworks as resulting from the implementation of EU directives.
Thanks to this set of resources and functionalities, the CrossJustice platform will contribute to meet all needs above indicated, in the domain of criminal procedure rights. In particular, it will contribute to:
• Provide an ICT-supported analysis and assessment over the compliance of national legislation with EU acquis on the matter
• Support capacity building of legal professionals, by enabling lawyers and students to complement their knowledge of the national implementation of the EU acquis on procedural rights
More generally, the CrossJustice project will contribute to the following:
• Strengthen the cooperation and exchange of information between competent judicial and law enforcement authorities on the rights of persons suspected or accused of crime;
• Increase the awareness of relevant policy makers on substantial differences in the rights of persons suspected or accused of crimes across different national systems to facilitate the harmonisation of practices concerning procedural rights.
For further information see the website: https://site.unibo.it/cross-justice/it.
***
PROJECT: E-Procedure: Evidence in Time of Increased Use of Technology and Digitalization
With the continued advancement of information and new technologies, the increased usage and sophistication of digital evidence used in the documentation of human rights abuses and core international crimes, operations of judicial and quasi-judicial mechanism will likely be impacted. The International Nuremberg Principles Academy (Nuremberg Academy) has developed an interdisciplinary project that explores challenges related to the use of digital evidence in international criminal proceedings. The project seeks to address and to consider the potential impact that the increased usage of digital evidence and sophistication of technology might have on the rules of procedure and evidence at the international level. Considering the Nuremberg Academy’s mandate on core international crimes, the project focuses on the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the International Criminal Court, as the first permanent international criminal tribunal.
The project consists of five clusters that will take place both consequentially and simultaneously, as appropriate, and it is estimated to be completed in 2022.
