Legal Evidence, Police Intelligence, Crime Analysis or Detection, Forensic Testing, and Argumentation: An Overview of Computer Tools or Techniques

Notwithstanding a few seminal precursors from the late 1980s,it is only with the new century that the modelling of reasoningon legal evidence has emerged as a significant area within thewell-established field of AI & Law (active since the 1970s).An overview such as the one in this article has never appearedbefore in the literature. It is three-pronged: it is about themodelling of reasoning about legal evidence, about tools forlegal argumentation, and about select areas in forensic science.For newcomers into the modelling of legal evidence by meansof AI techniques, it is essentialnot to simplistically blunderinto such design choices that would result in flaws making thetools unusable by legal professionals, so it is important tobe aware of ongoing controversies. Other tools are appropriatefor law enforcement, e.g., tools assisting in crime analysis.In the compass of this article, we only very briefly deal withthe modelling of arguments as such, and we only sketchily forayinto forensic science, by selecting some areas within it byway of exemplification.