Automation of judicial decision-making upon criminal offense classification and sentencing

Considering the development of scientific and technological progress, which affects all spheres of human life, a change can be stated in the technical and criminalistic means of recording evidence and the use of information technology both in the pre-trial investigation and during the trial, expert, enforcement proceedings and the execution of sentences. The paper covers the issues of automation of judicial decision-making upon crime classification and sentencing. To this end, the criminal law and forensic prerequisites for automation of judicial decision-making were investigated, including the prospects for automation of judicial decisionmaking. In the course of the study, philosophical, general scientific and special methods of scientific knowledge were used. The paper highlights the need to introduce automation of not only document flow at the stages of pre-trial investigation, trial or enforcement proceedings, which is already achieved in Ukraine in the context of digitalization, but also automation of decision making by a judge. The most important decisions in the implementation of automation are the qualification of a criminal offense and sentencing. This will help achieve the purpose of a fair trial, reduce corruption risks and restore public confidence in the judiciary. We believe that such a purpose can be achieved using the judge’s automated workstation (AWS), which must meet certain requirements: 1) methodological support of the trial; 2) organizational, tactical and criminalistic means; 3) forensic means; 4) implementation of competence development; 5) use of additional background information. Such approach will additionally allow to spend less time on the creation of documents, decisions and their recording in unified registers. Furthermore, the judge will be able to choose the version of the decision made by the system, which will be issued on the basis of the prevailing private forensic technique and generalized judicial practice for this type of criminal offense