MovieChat Forums > Minority Report (2002) Discussion > A better way to run pre-crime

A better way to run pre-crime

posted 8 years ago by Ohio9
5 replies | jump to latest

Pre-Crime presents the ultimate brutal choice: Would you give up all your civil liberties for a system which could completely abolish murder? Of course the downside and point of contention is that in the movie it involved punishing people who had not yet actually committed any crimes.

However, as I was watching, I felt everyone was overlooking a better way: Don't include the punishment. Just stop the murders without punishing the future offenders.

This may seem silly. Why let people you know were going to kill off the hook? Well they haven't committed the crime yet, and more importantly, the primary purpose pre-crime is still accomplished: Preventing murders from happening. Lives are still saved.

That way seems to satisfy the issues of both civil liberties and crime fighting: You still stop the murders and save lives, but without punishment there is no violation of civil liberties nor any concern for innocent people being targeted. Even if the pre-cogs were to get an event wrong, it wouldn't matter because no harm would result.

Of course there is still the issue of the pre-cog units being horribly abused in order to run the system. But in terms of running pre-crime, this would be the perfect way to do it. What do you think?

[–] yurenchu 8 years ago

I think when a person A murders another person B, it's not because person A just wanted to kill B, but because there's some underlying problem. If you prevent the murder without any further consequences for the perpetrator (person A) and without taking the underlying problem away, then you may seem heroic for having prevented a serious crime (Hurray, Pre-Crime!), but you haven't really solved the situation. (For example, person A might try to kill B again or someone else at a later time.)

So I think just preventing murders without any further consequences is not good enough.

______
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[–] Ohio9 8 years ago

It's good enough from a civil liberties standard: It's the only way to ensure pre-crime is run in a manner that doesn't accidentally punish the innocent (since there is no real way to be sure the pre-cogs are right 100% of the time).

Running it without punishment may not resolve the situations that led to the murder attempt, but it still stops the murder, which is the most important thing. And it does so while ensuing the innocent are not punished in the process.

The potential murderer may try again later, and he may even succeed on his second attempt (the cops might be able to stop him in time), but i'd be willing to accept that risk for the sake of keeping civil liberties and the presumption of innocence intact. Wouldn't you?

[–] johnietoth 7 years ago

well think about this, attempted murder is still a punishable crime so they should not go free, just not life in the Halo..

[–] Ohio9 7 years ago

Pre-Crime usually stops murders before the attempt is made, so that's where the issue of civil liberties comes into play. In the rare cases where they can't stop the murder attempt (or completion) from taking place, they can just try and convict the offender in court like we do now, with all the proper safeguards of due process in place.

[–] nicolodebari 7 years ago

That would be stupid though. Trying to commit the same murder knowing PreCrime will arrest you again anyway? Wouldn't make sense unless the attempted murder really wants to be put away.