Robots have not only become part of our everyday life – they have assumed functions in our criminal justice systems. The following chapters from Sara Beale and Hayley Lawrence, Andrea Roth, Erin Murphy, Emily Silverman, Jörg Arnold, and Sabine Gless focus on evidentiary issues arising from human–robot interaction, while Bart Custers and Lonneke Stevens, as well as David Gray, look at the emerging impact of data protection on criminal justice. This introduction places the chapters in context of the broader issues surrounding the deployment of AI systems in criminal investigations and trials, not all of which are dealt with in the chapters.

European Criminal Law has developed into a complex, jagged subject matter, which at the same time has become increasingly important for everyday criminal law practice. On the one hand, this work aims to do comprehensive justice to the complexity of the matter without sacrificing readability. In order to achieve this, the book’s structure enables legal scholars and experienced practitioners to access the information relevant to them in a targeted manner and, at the same time, enables less-oriented readers to gain access to European Criminal Law. Thus, the volume both answers basic questions and offers discussion in more specialised areas. Written by experts in the field, the book offers discussions that are both of the highest academic standards and accessibly readable.

This chapter considers ethical prototypes, which give needed specificity to the very general ethical orientations defined by principles and parameters. In ethical decision and behavior, we are concerned with sequences of actions and the motivations guiding these actions. In other words, we are concerned with stories. In this chapter, I argue that the prototypes at issue in specifying our ethical orientations are, most importantly, the universal story structures that I have sought to isolate in earlier works – heroic, romantic, sacrificial, family separation, seduction, revenge, and criminal investigation. These narrative structures are inseparable from human emotion systems. Indeed, story universals are shaped by emotion–motivation systems (along with some general patterns in emotion intensification); those systems (and patterns) account for their universality. In addition, these story genres are of crucial importance for the way we think about and respond to various worldly concerns, such as politics. The third chapter extends these arguments to ethics.

The means of detection determined investigation and interrogation practices. Conspiratorial networks and targeted minorities were vulnerable to surveillance and infiltration in ways that society was not. Distinct groups with organized structures could be mapped to uncover organized resistance. Policing criticism was sisyphean by comparison. Blanket surveillance was neither realistic nor desirable. Practically, general suspicion threatened popular support. Ideologically, the police were to cooperate with racial comrades. Faced with limited resources and an impossible task, the Gestapo relied on Germans to denounce opponents in their midst. The Party played an integral role to this end. On the one hand, it screened accusations and channeled reports to the Gestapo. On the other, its officials reported a fifth of critics and encouraged others to do the same. These intermediaries dismissed minor offences, yet the Gestapo ultimately relied on denouncers with mixed motives. Highly questionable evidence documented potentially serious incidents. The Gestapo investigated critics thoroughly and cautiously as a result.