How does a focus on retribution break a criminal justice system? Mondays at 9 p.m. you can watch FOX’s new show Minority Report and find out.
Inspired by the movie of the same name, FOX’s Minority Report portrays a society emerging from the shadow of a utopia where murder didn’t exist because the authorities used psychics (precognitive or “pre-cogs”) to predict murders and arrest suspects before the crime is committed. The system fell apart when it was discovered that innocent people could fall victim to misleading predictions.
Retribution-minded citizens likely agree with the members of SQ Reviews that the pre-cog system is unethical, but our ethics diverge with our reasoning. The general tenor of Minority Report, and retributive theories, is that the pre-cog system is unethical because if even one innocent person can wake up with a life sentence, the system is unconscionable. We agree, but it’s a disturbing ethic that misses the elephantine travesty crouched by the couch.
SQ Reviews meets in the lot between the education department and the San Quentin News to talk about the elephant.
“You have this system that can predict who will commit a crime before even the would-be perpetrator knows it,” says Emile DeWeaver. “This society is so caught up in retributive justice that they’re imprisoning people for crimes they’ll commit in the future. Nobody has thought, ‘Hey, we know everyone who might commit a crime. Let’s get them some help BEFORE they ruin their lives.’”
“It’s inhumane,” says Juan Meza. “It says these human lives aren’t worth saving because they don’t have value. This same logic ruled in the 1990s when they started trying more and more children as adults. Politicians pushed this idea that some kids are born bad. The public believed in this bad-seed myth, that these troubled kids couldn’t change, so it was okay to lock them out of society forever.”
Rahsaan Thomas remembers a quote from the only fringe-thinker on the show. “In order for pre-cog to work, the public has to believe that people can’t change. The whole thing reminds me of mass incarceration. The only way a moral country can make up 5 percent of the world’s population but hold 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population is by believing that the incarcerated population is somehow inherently bad.”
Jonathan Chiu agrees, but he offers to play Devil’s advocate. “It kind of sounds like you guys are making a moral argument against mass incarceration. Like you’re saying it’s inhumane. What would you say to someone who said your crime was inhumane, so you don’t deserve humanity?”
Meza, Thomas and DeWeaver start talking at the same time. They talk about how difficult it is to answer the question. Nobody wants to sound like they’re minimizing the heinous nature of their history, but neither are the members of SQ Reviews willing to be defined by who they used to be.
“I don’t accept that I can’t have morals today because I was a horrible person before,” Meza says. “I’ve done decades of work to get right with Christ, and if I see that something is wrong in my society – my society that I’m a part of, that I’m trying to give back to – I’m going to say something.”
“It’s never okay to deny another’s humanity,” says DeWeaver. “It’s not okay for Minority Report to reinforce the inhumanity of justice without compassion. It wasn’t okay when I shot my victims, and it’s not okay for our society to ignore the humanity of the people it incarcerates.”
SQ Reviews rates FOX’s Minority Report 1 of 5 dinner cookies.
