LocationsFaster, Fairer and More Accountable: How Digital Public Goods Can Strengthen Justice Systems
April 22, 2026
Access to justice goes beyond having legal rights and formal institutions in place – it is shaped by practical realities of how justice systems function and how they are experienced. This is particularly evident in under-resourced and paper-based systems, where authorities typically exhaust an extensive amount of time searching and organizing files than investigating cases. This often results in several delays, adding burden to an already under-resourced system and disadvantaging victims who must wait for justice to be served.
In Barbados, for example, more than half of the prison population—about 54.7 percent—is held on remand awaiting trial. This points to how breakdowns across the justice chain can affect both victims and those still waiting to have their case heard in court. These delays are compounded by understaffing, fragmented records, and backlogs over several years, which often leaves frontline officers to shoulder the burden of building a case with various barriers to information flows.
This was the backdrop of UNDP’s recent Digital X 3.0 knowledge-exchange webinar on digital justice for human security, organized in partnership with the Government of Japan. The discussion brought together UNDP colleagues and solution providers to explore how digital solutions, especially digital public goods, can improve policing workflows, strengthen case management, and help institutions coordinate more effectively across the justice chain.
The discussions highlighted two complementary solutions:
- In Eastern Caribbean, the Police Records Management Information System (PRMIS) supports police in managing cases from report to prosecution, through a shared digital solution co-developed with police to enhance case management across institutions.
- In Brazil, Crime Nabi supports law enforcement by using AI to predict where crime is likely to emerge, enabling smarter resource deployment and proactive responses.
PRMIS: Designed for real-world operational needs
To address the inefficiencies of paper-based systems, fragmented records, and delayed case handling described earlier, police forces across the Eastern Caribbean co-developed the Police Records Management Information System (PRMIS), with support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). PRMIS is an open-source digital tool designed for real-world operational needs.
PRMIS replaces manual registries with a unified, web-based platform that captures policing data across 26 modules. What previously required physically searching through logbooks can now be accessed digitally with greater ease. Officers can generate reports in seconds, track incidents from their inception, and retrieve information that previously took weeks or months to locate. As its design is informed by police officers real-world experience, the system aligns closely with how the work actually happens — and the impact is clear:
“When we had to do a yearly [crime statistics report], sometimes it took us months to compile all the data that was needed to put together, delivering a report in March the following year, when the statistics were no longer as relevant as they would have been at the start of the year. Now we can track and address incidents before they progress into criminal matters,” said Antonia Coutain, a constable from the Royal Grenada Police Force.
This data is now readily available to each PRMIS user through a live dashboard showing arrests and incident reports, broken down by geography and station. The dashboard also provides a rotating banner of wanted/missing persons, and urgent issues to be addressed by the user, alongside a data visualization of incidents. Requests for information can be readily shared across stations and even across countries, with appropriate privacy and data protection safeguards in place.
Through UNDP’s Digital Public Goods for Development Programme and Digital X 3.01, UNDP is supporting the Eastern Caribbean in strengthening human security by upgrading PRMIS to improve interoperability with the Offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions. This update will pilot secure real-time data sharing and reduce procedural delays that currently contribute to remand populations exceeding 20–50 percent of total prison populations. This is an important contribution to a broader ‘Justice Net’ vision for a unified platform that will ultimately connect police, prosecution, courts, and prisons in a single, interoperable system.
PRMIS demonstrates how collaborative and adaptable digital approaches can move work in government from fragmented and reactive to coordinated and responsive. It enables governments to co-invest in maintenance, upgrades, and capacity development, reducing costs while strengthening regional data capabilities. This model offers a practical pathway for Small Island Developing States and other resource-constrained settings to collaboratively adopt and sustain open digital solutions, building shared technical capacity and more resilient public-sector infrastructure – with the potential to extend these benefits to millions of people.
Crime Nabi: expanding policing possibilities
While PRMIS improves how justice systems respond, tools like Crime Nabi help inform where and how resources are deployed.
Leveraging Japanese technological expertise, Crime Nabi illustrates how advanced innovation can be adapted to address real-world public safety challenges in development contexts. The AI-informed system forecasts areas with elevated crime risk locations and supports more effective deployment of patrol and security resources. This is done by generating high-resolution risk maps that help teams focus on specific places and times. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil for instance, the use of Crime Nabi-supported patrols resulted in a 69 percent reduction in crime in targeted areas, with approximately twice the deterrence effect compared to areas not using the system.
By enabling more precise deployment, the system directly addresses the common challenge of limited resources. It helps institutions act more proactively, rather than reacting to outdated information. By relying on aggregated, location-based data, Crime Nabi focuses on identifying spatial risk patterns rather than profiling individuals, thereby mitigating risks of bias, discriminatory practices and privacy concerns. The system is used as a decision-support tool complemented with human oversight to ensure decisions are not made solely by automated systems.
Closing the gap between technology and justice
Across both examples, a consistent message emerged: technology alone is not enough.
Digital systems deliver results only when they are supported by the right enabling environment — including leadership, training, infrastructure, and governance. In the Caribbean, sustained adoption of PRMIS has depended on strong institutional ownership, continuous capacity-building, and partnerships with local actors that support long-term maintenance beyond initial deployment.
Success also relies on the culture shift: from paper to data, from isolated to coordinated, from reactive to preventive. Introducing a digital tool does not automatically transform how institutions operate. Adoption depends on whether systems are designed with users, integrated into daily workflows, and supported by leadership that values data-driven decision-making.
But as UNDP has highlighted in this discussion on advancing digital justice pathways in Malawi, digital justice is not only about efficiency—it is about trust. Meaningful transformation requires combining digital innovation with institutional, legal, and cultural change, alongside safeguards designed from the start to ensure systems are inclusive, accessible, and responsive to those who need them most.
Strengthening justice systems is ultimately about strengthening human security. When authorities can access reliable data, coordinate effectively, and respond quickly, cases are resolved faster, communities feel safer, and frontline officers are better equipped to do their jobs and make informed decisions.
The webinar made clear that the future of digital justice is not just about going from paper to digital –it is about building rights-respecting systems that are faster, fairer, and more accountable with safeguards for the people who rely on them most.
Through Digital X and complementary e-Justice, safeguards, and digital public infrastructure initiatives, UNDP is working with governments to identify, adapt scale, and implement digital solutions that can support that vision.
Visit the Digital X catalogue to explore open and adaptable digital solutions, and dive deeper through the Digital X 3.0 webinar series, which brings together diverse perspectives on strengthening human security through digital solutions.