| Abstract: |
Contemporary criminal law is being reshaped by normative, technological and administrative pressures. States must prevent violence, respond to cybercrime and manage uncertainty while preserving liberty, equality, privacy, dignity and fair hearings. This paper presents a critical meta-review of past work on that balance, with particular relevance to Switzerland and the wider European human-rights space. A PRISMA-informed, structured synthesis was used to read prior systematic reviews, meta-analyses, causal evaluations and primary legal instruments as a connected evidence base rather than as isolated policy literatures. Four patterns recur. First, procedural justice is not a soft alternative to security: meta-analytic evidence links fair treatment with legitimacy and cooperation, which are operational assets for public safety. Second, targeted place-based and focused-deterrence strategies can reduce crime, but average effects are modest and sensitive to design quality, context and implementation. Third, pretrial detention produces a recurrent rights safety paradox: it may incapacitate in the short term while worsening conviction, incarceration and future-crime outcomes through coercive and criminogenic pathways. Fourth, rehabilitation and restorative practices generally outperform purely punitive responses on recidivism, satisfaction and accountability, although selection bias, heterogeneous programme and weak implementation evidence limit causal certainty. Predictive policing, risk assessment and biometric identification remain the least mature fields: retrospective accuracy claims substantially exceed independent evidence of lawful, equitable and durable justice outcomes. It argues that legality, contestability, auditability and remedy are public-safety infrastructure. For Switzerland, the Criminal Procedure Code, the ECHR and European AI standards provide a baseline for rights-compatible innovation across democratic societies and institutions. |
