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.