Tom Cruise can read your mind.
I already know what you're going to say, but let's go through this week's thought experiment anyway.
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Damn liberals. Chief Inspector Andrews had worked miracles in this city. Murders down 90 per cent. Robberies down 80 per cent. Street crime down 85 per cent. Car theft down 70 per cent. But now she was in the dock and all that good work in jeopardy.
Her police authority was the first in the country to implement the newly legalised pre-emptive justice programme. Advances in computing and AI now made it possible to predict who would commit what sort of crime in the near future. People could be tested for all sorts of reasons: as part of a random programme or on the basis of a specific suspicion. If there were found to be future criminals, then they would be arrested and punished in advance.
Andrews did not think the scheme draconian. In fact, because no crime had been committed at the time of the arrest, sentences were much more lenient. A future murderer would go on an intense program designed to make sure they didn't go on and kill and would only be released when tests showed they wouldn't. Often that meant detention of less than a year. Had they been left to actually commit the crime, they would have been looking at life imprisonment and, more importantly, a person would be dead.
But still these damn liberals protested that you can't lock someone up for something they didn't do. Andrews grimaced, and wondered how many she could pull in for testing...
Sources: Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg (2002); 'The Minority Report' by Philip K. Dick, republished in Minority Report: The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick (Gollancz, 2000).
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 106.
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What do you think? Can you pre-empt my post on Friday when I discuss my answer to this?
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Damn liberals. Chief Inspector Andrews had worked miracles in this city. Murders down 90 per cent. Robberies down 80 per cent. Street crime down 85 per cent. Car theft down 70 per cent. But now she was in the dock and all that good work in jeopardy.
Her police authority was the first in the country to implement the newly legalised pre-emptive justice programme. Advances in computing and AI now made it possible to predict who would commit what sort of crime in the near future. People could be tested for all sorts of reasons: as part of a random programme or on the basis of a specific suspicion. If there were found to be future criminals, then they would be arrested and punished in advance.
Andrews did not think the scheme draconian. In fact, because no crime had been committed at the time of the arrest, sentences were much more lenient. A future murderer would go on an intense program designed to make sure they didn't go on and kill and would only be released when tests showed they wouldn't. Often that meant detention of less than a year. Had they been left to actually commit the crime, they would have been looking at life imprisonment and, more importantly, a person would be dead.
But still these damn liberals protested that you can't lock someone up for something they didn't do. Andrews grimaced, and wondered how many she could pull in for testing...
Sources: Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg (2002); 'The Minority Report' by Philip K. Dick, republished in Minority Report: The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick (Gollancz, 2000).
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 106.
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What do you think? Can you pre-empt my post on Friday when I discuss my answer to this?
