Perception of AI's Role in Crime Perception, Public Fear, Community Safety, and Mental Health among Adolescents

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Community security programs and crime prevention are leveraged more frequently that includes facial recognition, predictive policing, and surveillance. Their psychological and social effect is quite controversial, although these technologies are often offered as the answers to the higher security of people. The researchers express concern about the role played by AI in image-making or perception of the crime, the sense of terror, ensuring safety and mental health of the overall population in this paper. The study relies on the survey conducted among 400 respondents (mixed method), focus groups and interviews during which teenagers identified AI as a source of anxiety, as well as the preventative mechanism. The outcomes of the research indicates that crime may appear more visible with the help of AI, which contributes to expansion of awareness, and riskiness. It was also dependent on gender and the community environment because female adolescents were more likely to view AI monitoring more favorably, whereas male adolescents discussed it as intrusive. Teenage representatives of disadvantaged groups reported higher levels of distrust because they explained how AI is a system to reinforce inequality and over-policing. This ambivalence could be observed in terms of mental health, as respondents explained that they felt safer and less scared but others were victims of surveillance fatigue and higher standardized scores. These results appear to be contradictory of AI, where on the one hand it adds to a sense of greater security, and on the other, exacerbates psychological stress.

On the basis of the outcome of this study, it is concluded   that the participation in the relation to AI among adolescents is found to be highly situational projected with the opposition of social place, institutional trust, and the exposure to digital realities. Moreover, adolescent voices are allowing policymakers and actors to create AI systems that enable youth rather than incapacitate them in a society that is increasingly becoming computerized. For better understanding of the study, brief points of good governance, literature of artificial intelligence, gender sensitivity and integration of mental health support are shown as a suggestion.