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AI incidents in policing, justice & courts
Headlights has documented 16 AI incidents in policing, justice & courts, 7% of the library, from 2016 to 2026. The behaviours most often in the record are automation bias (6), overconfidence (3), rules-behaviour gap (2). Most are from the United States (3), Australia (2), Brazil (2).
16 incidents, newest first
HD-INC-215Colombia's Supreme Court Moved a Trial After an AI-Assisted Draft Conviction SurfacedColombia · 2025HD-INC-213BC's Privacy Commissioner Ordered a City to Stop Its Licence Plate Recognition CamerasCanada · 2026HD-INC-208Dutch Auditors Found Police Did Not Track What Their Number Plate Algorithm Led ToNetherlands · 2026HD-INC-207India's Supreme Court Voided a Tribunal Order Built on Fake AI-Generated PrecedentsIndia · 2026HD-INC-206Brazil's Superior Court Threw Out a Police Report Made With Generative AIBrazil · 2026HD-INC-185It was reported that an Argentine court annulled a criminal sentence after a chatbot instruction was found in the judgment. Months later, that decision was overturned.Argentina · 2025HD-INC-181A Dutch inspectorate found the probation organisations' recidivism tool had the formulas for detained and non-detained people the wrong way round, and had done since 2018Netherlands · 2026HD-INC-179Police intelligence used to support an away fan ban contained eight reported errors, including a Copilot result about a match that never happenedUnited Kingdom · 2025HD-INC-151Two US federal judges withdrew orders that contained misstated case outcomes and a citation to a case that did not exist, and both told a Senate committee that staff had used AI to draft themUnited States · 2025HD-INC-128São Paulo built one of Latin America's largest facial recognition networks, with tens of thousands of cameras planned to match passers-by against watchlists, and reporting found it identified wanted people but also stopped some who were innocentBrazil · 2024HD-INC-122France became the first country in the European Union to write mass AI video surveillance into law, scanning the crowds at the 2024 Paris Olympics for events like crowd surges and abandoned bags, over the objections of rights groupsFrance · 2024HD-INC-111Spain's VioGén algorithm rated a woman who reported her former partner as 'medium' risk, and she was killed three weeks later, in a case that fits a pattern an independent audit had already foundSpain · 2025HD-INC-096Australia's federal police trialled Clearview's face-search tool on Australians without a privacy check, and the regulator found it breached privacy lawAustralia · 2021HD-INC-080NSW Police risk-scored people, many of them children, onto a targeting list for repeated stops, and ended the program after a watchdog inquiryAustralia · 2023HD-INC-054Detroit police arrested the man in his driveway on a facial-recognition match, the first wrongful arrest of its kind publicly known in the USUnited States · 2020HD-INC-046A risk-assessment tool used in US courts reportedly flagged Black defendants as high risk at nearly twice the rate it did white defendants, and its maker would not show howUnited States · 2016
Related topics
- Automation bias 6
- Overconfidence 3
- Rules-behaviour gap 2
- Authority ambiguity 1
- United States 3
- Australia 2
- Brazil 2
Cite this page: Harris, E. (2026). AI incidents in policing, justice & courts. Headlights. https://useheadlights.com/topics/industry/policing/