The judiciary is set to fully introduce artificial intelligence (AI) technology into the sentencing process, which determines the punishment for defendants found guilty. The move aims to ease the workload of criminal court divisions and mitigate staffing shortages and trial delays. Analysts say the system could also help reduce sentencing disparities and enhance trust in the judiciary by providing sentencing precedents from similar cases more systematically.
According to the legal community on Tuesday, the Supreme Court plans to operate the first phase of its "intelligent platform for AI-based criminal trial and sentencing support" starting in October next year. It then plans to launch second-phase services in April 2028 and complete a third-phase expansion in December of the same year. The project is being pursued with a total budget of 10.3 billion won.
The sentencing AI is focused on improving the work efficiency of criminal court divisions. In the first phase, along with searching for similar rulings, functions that automatically extract sentencing factors, sentencing elements, and grounds for considering suspended sentences from judgments will be activated. The scope of services will expand through the second and third phases. A natural-language search function that finds relevant precedents when queried in a conversational manner will be added, along with functions for AI to draft sentencing rationale or to check for sentencing errors in completed draft judgments. It will also include a function that visualizes sentencing data through graphs and other means, allowing distributions of sentences imposed and patterns by crime type to be grasped at a glance.
The judiciary expects that through such a system, judges will be able to check data-based sentencing materials more quickly. It assesses that systematically providing sentencing results and sentencing elements from similar cases could also help reduce sentencing disparities between court divisions. Behind the judiciary's move to build sentencing-support AI is a judgment that the workload of criminal court divisions has reached its limit. Concerns are growing that the recent implementation of the "law-distortion crime" could deepen the tendency of judges to avoid criminal cases, and the strain on court personnel management from the expansion of eligibility for civil servant parental leave is also expected to compound the situation.
Beyond the sentencing AI, the judiciary is pursuing measures to incorporate AI technology across trial operations. In February this year, it began a pilot operation of a trial-support AI system based on its own AI platform, and it is also developing an AI-based registration information analysis system. However, the judiciary is emphasizing that AI does not replace judges' decisions. "Both the sentencing AI and the trial-support AI are not intended to replace judges' decisions but to support simple and repetitive work so that judges can focus on core tasks such as conducting trials and making decisions," a judiciary official said.
