The Imperishable Record, Forgiveness, and the Future of Criminal Justice
Digital technologies can preserve records of wrongdoing indefinitely, and AI can give those records continuing influence over a person's future. We describe this condition as the eternal data present and argue that it threatens the possibility of forgiveness. In criminal justice, formal punishment has an end, whereas the harms caused by the continued use of criminal records may not. Drawing on Hegel's account of the "hard heart" and Arendt's account of the irreversibility of action, we distinguish two dangers that digital systems can combine. People may be permanently identified with what they have done, and acts that cannot be undone may continue to determine what happens to them. We pro...
| Authors | Mark Fenwick, Paulius Jurcys, Sebastian Porsdam Mann |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CY |
| Published | 11 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 11 October 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 14 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.