Kehoe: Freedom and Minority Report

In Minority Report all murder has stopped because of the Pre Cog’s ability to predict a murder before it happens. A major underlying theme in the film is the idea of freedom. If someone can be arrested for a crime they have not yet committed then the idea of free choice is an illusion because no matter what a person’s current intentions are, if the Pre Cogs determine that that person will commit a murder in the future, they are labeled as a criminal by society.
Terri Murray’s “Our Post-Moral Future” tackles the same issues as Minority Report but in a real world setting. Murray’s article talks about how new brain scanning technologies are able to predict a person’s intentions. The implication of this new technology is that society will soon be able to predict if a person will be a criminal. It also implies that there is a genetic predisposition to criminal behavior in some people.
The technology in Minority Report is strikingly similar to the technology described in Murray’s article. However, the difference between Minority Report and reality is how the “criminals” are treated. In Minority Report the people who are arrested are treated as if they did commit a murder, they are labeled as a criminal and punished. Murray suggests that the technology described in her article will do the same thing; if someone has a genetic predisposition to crime then that person will be labeled as a criminal thereby taking choice away from that person. Here is where I disagree with Murray, if society were able to predict if a person was going to be a criminal, I feel that the society would treat them as a person with a disease or disorder. To suggest that that would be taking away a choice would be like saying that diagnosing someone with depression is taking away his or her choice to be happy. But of course it does not, it just means that the person with depression has to be counseled or medicated to live a happy life. It is the same with crime, if it can be scientifically determined that a person has a predisposition towards criminal behavior then they should be treated like anyone else who has a genetic or psychological problem.

Tucker, Minority Report

In the movie Minority Report the story takes place in a world where the whole justice system literally depends on two precogs. These precogs are humans whose thought can be taken from their heads and put on a screen to be analyzed. Their thoughts are analyzed because their thoughts show the future, future crimes. Precogs show crimes before they are committed so that the head of the police force Tom Anderton, who is played by Tom Cruise, can catch them before the crime is committed. Although this eliminates crime all together and supposedly saves many lives Terri Murray, the author of Our Post Moral Future, and I disagree with this idea. I believe that unless the crime is committed it cannot count as a crime or as Terri puts it " ‘crime’ is meaningless unless it is done, and is a crime precisely because it is done". Punishing someone for just their intent is taking away the freedom of choice and decision. I believe if this new type of justice system were to ever actually become a reality that the public would riot against it taking away their constitutional rights. Also if there were no crimes committed, no one as examples to show what would really happen if a horrible crime was committed then their would be no virtuous people because "what allows us to feel virtuous, as opposed to the vicious people who commit crimes, is that we choose not to act upon these thoughts". Terri also makes a good point by saying, "if we are prepared to punish people for what they merely intend to do, are we also prepared to reward people for good intentions before a virtuous deed is done?". In conclusion I think the whole idea of arresting people for a crime that has not been officially committed is violating rights and wrong.