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NLJ this week: AI, liberty & the digital cage

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10 October 2025
Issue: 8134 / Categories: Legal News , Criminal , Artificial intelligence , Human rights , Technology
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Government plans for offender ‘restriction zones’ risk creating ‘digital cages’ that blur punishment with surveillance, warns Henrietta Ronson, partner at Corker Binning, in this week's issue of NLJ

The proposed scheme, part of a £700m expansion in GPS and AI monitoring, would confine released offenders to fixed areas—potentially breaching rights to liberty, privacy and livelihood under the ECHR.

Ronson argues the measures are incompatible with existing case law and plagued by the UK’s history of failed tagging systems. With AI risk-assessment algorithms already criticised as biased, she cautions against letting machines replace judicial discretion.

Drawing parallels with failed US exclusion laws, Ronson says such zones would breed inequality and resentment without reducing crime. Justice, she writes, ‘requires empathy and context—not predictive policing and perpetual monitoring’

Issue: 8134 / Categories: Legal News , Criminal , Artificial intelligence , Human rights , Technology
printer mail-details
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