Research of Innovation and Digital Transformation in Justice: A Systematic Review

Objective: To develop a mapping of studies on innovation and digital transformation in the justice sector, publishes from 2001 to 2022. Five research questions were defined: 1) How to define innovation and digital transformation introduced in the justice sector? 2) What types of innovations and digital transformations are implemented in the justice sector? 3) What are the objectives of introducing innovation and digital transformation in the justice sector? 4) What are the antecedents that influence the process of innovation and digital transformation in the justice sector? 5) What are the results of the innovation and digital transformation process in the justice sector? Methods: The systematic review of sources (scientific articles, conference proceedings, monographs and institutional documents) presented in this paper was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocol. Selected by “research field”, “topic”, “research design”, “year of publication” and the keywords “public administration”, “public sector”, “e-justice”, “digital transformation”, and “innovation”, the sources were analyzed and evaluated according to five main aspects: (1) definition of innovation; (2) types of innovation; (3) objectives of innovation; (4) antecedents of innovation; and (5) results of innovation. Results: The heuristic model for studying innovation in the public sector developed by Vries et al. (2015) was adapted and applied to the research field of justice. The adaptation of the heuristic model allowed forming the following areas of analysis: contextual antecedents in justice; institutional antecedents in justice; characteristics of innovation and digital transformation in justice; individual antecedents in justice; types of innovation and digital transformation in justice; results of the process of innovation and digital transformation in justice. Scientific novelty: a comprehensive review of the literature in the field of innovation and digital transformation in justice is presented by adapting the approach to conducting systematic studies of the literature in the social sciences. It helped to identify gaps and define directions for further research in the given field, including the activation of comparative legal research, expansion of the methodological base, reliance on the theories of public administration, etc. Practical significance: the obtained results allow forming a heuristic map of innovation and digital transformation in justice, create antecedents (contextual, institutional and individual) and the basis for future empirical research in the field of justice, analysis, evaluation and improvement of public policy in the field of innovation and digital transformation in this area.