Children’s Rights and Criminal Justice in the Digital Age

In the data economy, childhood is a lucrative commodity. The digital technologies that offer incredible possibilities for children’s enrichment and empowerment also open avenues for their exploitation, denigration, criminalisation, and control. Coming to grips with this paradigm of technological benefits and harms requires a deepened understanding about how children's rights are engaged within a technocratic system that distributes costs and benefits unequally. In the context of the altered flows of data and power in the digital age, Wendy O’Brien argues for a resurgence in the commitment to equal human dignity. Challenging narrow conceptualisations of online risks to children, the book identifies the need to confront the techno-social status quo that accepts harms against children as inevitable. This book will be of interest to legal scholars, criminologists, policy makers and technologists with an interest in upholding children’s rights in the age of AI. Wendy O’Brien is Adjunct Associate Professor with Deakin University, Australia. Her academic research focuses on technology and human rights. Wendy currently works with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna.