There is technology that can detect thoughts that might, or will, lead to a crime.
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Is it ethically responsible to hold people in detention for crimes they are going to commit in the future?
Normally, you will be sentenced to prison for a crime you committed in the past. The punishment is a reaction to your crime. If you’d commit murder, you would be in prison for 30 years or so, maybe for the rest of your life. We see this as a normal thing, but were you accountable for what you did? Probably so, unless you have a mental disorder. It is very hard to draw the line between those two. Doesn’t everyone who commits murder have a mental disorder? The real question is whether someone will commit murder again. If you have a mental disorder you aren’t expected to. You’re just a case of chance.
But if you’re not a case of chance, and you have been in prison for 29 years, with one year left, are you at that moment still accountable for what you did 29 years ago? How long does a punishment have to last? The worse the crime, the longer the imprisonment. But do those 30 years re-awake the dead person? Do they take away the guilt?
In the Netherlands the police is punishing people for crimes they committed, 4 years ago. People who uploaded videos of illegal sets of fireworks a few years ago are being held accountable for it now. Is this not a strange way of punishing, when people don’t even remember the video existing on YouTube?
What if you’re sentenced for a crime you are going to commit in the future? In the movie Minority Report gifted humans predict that John, the main character, will commit murder in 36 hours. John doesn’t even know the victim at that moment, but he is sentenced for murder. If pre-crime detection were possible in our world, would we use it? Are you accountable for a murder you are going to commit, without yourself knowing yet? We’d say it’s impossible to prove a future crime, but what if the government says the pre-crime detection is certainly right?
Video:
Indefinite Detention for Future Crime
Moment Matters 
Scary stuff these days..so much Government control and frightening tactics.
Wait…how does Obama fit into this?
@alleyandthemovies-I was wondering the same thing.
There are always glitches with any technology.
Technology can be a good thing, but in this case it could lead to very scary times.
Scary….
I second this comment.
That’s just… preposterous. Wow.
Hope you had a great day! 💋
“Minority Report” is my favourite film – it raises such interesting ethical -and political questions. I used it a lot when I was teaching.
So if I understand you right (and I’m having a hard time doing that), you think a murderer should not still be jailed 4 years after he or she commits the murder?
Additionally, you have a single line accusing President Obama of believing that people should be incarcerated before the crime, but you say nothing else about it and the video you link to doesn’t work.
This is the first time that I recall a post from you that makes absolutely no sense.
Yeah, I was having a hard time following that bit as well.
Me too…I don’t see connection.
I would not equate an illegal video with murder, not even to make a self-serving argument.
The answer to your question “with one year left, are you at that moment still accountable for what you did 29 years ago?” is an easy one to answer: “is the person you murdered still dead?”
In no small part society benefited from the removal of violent individuals from their ranks (lots of actual data to draw from, unlike speculating about the future), and it irks me no small amount the “rights” of a criminal have taken on an air of greater importance than the fact they hurt or killed someone. I know I am in the minority, but if you hurt or murder someone, you have broken your contract with society; you can’t then claim rights you were not willing to grant others.
I really don’t care the reason, and care even less for the ever-popular “are we really truly responsible for what we do, or are we a product of society/nature/etc”; at the end of a day, if you killed someone you should be removed from society (I prefer permanent removal as it lessens the chance more people will be hurt). If someone wants to view it as society having “failed” the individual, then also view the result as society “fixing” their mistake.
But ultimately, the vast majority of people are (or should be held) responsible for their actions, especially when other people are negatively (sometime extremely negatively) impacted. And saying one is not responsible for their action is not, in my book, an absolution. Rather, it puts them down to the level of an animal; one that needs to be put down.
Someone is sure to want to discuss this, but my views are clearly stated above. I grant others hold different views, and in the near-sixty years of my life I heard pretty much all the arguments.
It come down to an overly-inflated value being placed on the live of individual humans, usually stemming from a perceived station of privilege granted by some imaginary entity, or other such nonsense.
Not being burdened by such beliefs, I assign value to human life based on the actions of said humans. The vast majority of individuals (including me) are at the neutral position (meaning, inconsequential to society and humanity as a whole), doing no great harm or great good other than in a very narrow sphere of influence.
Within that sphere, if you are doing intentional harm, you are basically worthless, and should be disposed of. Those you affect would be better off. That whole “rehabilitation” thing? Not much evidence for it.
And the answer to the last question you pose is that in the first instance, the crime has in fact been committed. The parallel you wish to draw is weak at best.
I like the way you bring up the contract the individual has with society as well as that society has with the individual. Everyone talks about society failing person P, but what about what person P has done to society?
Although I don’t believe that the mentally ill should be exonerated for a crime they commit, I also don’t think they should be kept in standard prisons. A prison psych ward, yes. A lock down facility, yes. I believe they deserve treatment because they have been failed by a system and a society that tries to hide them and their existence. But the people that commit crimes while mentally ill should still be punished. If I write bad checks while in the midst of mania, I am aware of what I am doing, I just can’t *not* do it. When I am level again, it is my responsibility to take care of the mess I created, up to and including jail time.
I’m sorry for the link. Maybe this will clear things up for you:
I will try to explain things better in the future,
thanks for reading
Punishing before a crime is committed? Won’t happen in the US. Innocent until proven guilty is the law. You aren’t guilty before a crime is committed.
It would not be acceptable to me.
What would be great would be for mankind to pull their collective butts completely out of the barbarianisms of our past. Then murder won’t be an issue, even if we could detect it beforehand.
Would you go back in time to kill Stalin/Hitler/Mao before they killed lots of people? This is the same question: if you know someone will be guilty for an atrocity, with certainty, would you punish them before it happened.
I think the legal system of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ would stop the government from implementing this as a ‘punishment’ (if the technology ever existed). But calling it pre-emptive, precautionary or preventative (like the Patriot Act) would happen.
So, I don’t think people would be arrested as ‘murderers’ before they commit the murder, but detained on the grounds of protection of society, yes, I think that could happen.
The Minority Report *SPOILER ALERT* has another interesting quirk worthy of discussion; the prediction of a murder is the trigger for it happening. If the prediction was never made Jon would never have ended up in that situation.
Lastly, no matter what your personal philosophy on the issue might be, no one will accept a legal system that does away with freewill. Any prediction of the future being made with certainty about people assumes there is no freewill. The public will never accept a system that makes that assumption.
(As with all philosophy, I haven’t answered the question. Sorry about that)
A lot of what you say about easy prisons is right. I have only visited prisons in the UK and South Africa so my first hand knowledge is limited. However I would rather go into a British Jail than a South African one as the. The reason being that they have many open prisons and the medium security ones have all the amenities, some even better than outside. The justice system at the moment is quite lenient and bias towards rehabilitation. This does not seem to work very well at the moment as many re-offend as there is not enough punishment. The South African judiciary is very slow and is perceived to be ANC bias as all cadres seem to take many years to get Jail time and then are let out after a few months. Some have 700 cases to answer, so they throw them out and give him the TOP job. If you do go to a standard Jail in SA it is a death sentence usually because the first thing is you will end up with AIDS. It seems that unless you are a well known in Cadre circles you will not get the level of medical care that you need. Neither method seems to work because both let violent criminals out to re-offend, most of who should have got the death penalty metered out by the State, not the inmates.
The government’s technology is so advanced–last time I heard, it’s 10 years into the future compared to that released to the public. They now have ways to see what you’re looking at on your phone outside from outer space…they have inside jobs to mislead the public into thinking they’re protecting you…who knows what’s going on…all you can do is live!
Oh, and if they put out a machine that can put you in jail before you commit a crime, man I have no words to say!