Evaluation of the Disruptive Change brought about by our Future Vision
BENEFITS
Social Benefits
The numerous and obvious advantages to be reaped in terms of peace, security and lowered crime rates has been elaborated on in the earlier sections.
The proposed vision aims to target crime at its roots, before it can even be committed. This is a revolutionary overhaul of the current framework within which our society functions, where forensic crime-solving technology serves merely a remedial function. This function is to give relief/remedies to the victims and or their families after crimes and their hurtful consequences have already occurred, by finding the culprit and bringing him or her to justice. However, the proposed future development to such technology will no longer have a remedial function, but instead a preventive function. Indeed, as the traditional saying goes: “Prevention is better than cure”.
Besides its applicability to multifarious types of criminal activity over all spectrums, future crime prediction can bring a radical and progressive solution to the very real threat of terrorism. Imagine the extent of damage and devastation that can be averted if law enforcement can predict and stop a suspicious individual from walking into a crowded place with a bomb?
Economic Benefits
Furthermore, besides social benefits, there are significant economic advantages. With increased stability and security, more global transnational corporations will seek to be established in the country and business confidence will grow. An increase in investors and foreign direct investments will allow for a country’s further rapid economic growth.
In addition, with preventive detection of white-collared crimes such as corporate fraud and embezzlement, billions of dollars can be saved each year. In Financial Year 2011 alone, the FBI secured $2.4 billion in restitution orders and $16.1 million in fines from corporate criminals (Federal Bureau of Investigation, n.d.). This is merely the funds that have been recovered after the crime was discovered, sometimes long after a part of the embezzled funds have been spent or become untraceable. This astounding statistical figure is also non-inclusive of crimes that had not been discovered. As such, with future crime prediction, large amounts of funds can be protected and economic growth of the country can be encouraged.
Social Concerns
Detractors might cite social concerns such as that of taking away a citizen’s fundamental rights of privacy and civil liberty through omnipresent crime monitoring. However, for a legal system or crime control model to effectively bring about peace in a country, public/societal interest must outweigh that of the individual’s. When an individual commits a crime, he or she has renounced his own right to private interest in the course of doing an act that affects public good negatively. As such, it is not a big stretch in logic to argue that in order to prevent people from even having a chance to affect the public good, a slight compromise in their privacy rights is acceptable.
Furthermore, there might not be such a grave threat to privacy even. There can be legitimate checks and balances implemented to ensure that no single person or group exercises too much control over the system and its vast amount of personal information. Also, the automated computer system can calculate inputs for each individual without identifying the persons separately and they would just be one of many raw statistical numbers within the system. After a high degree of criminal risk is calculated (through the algorithm) and allocated to one of these data points, the data point would then be traced back to the individual’s real identity. Thus, it is not as if one’s every action and conduct will be made known and connected to one’s identity unless one is an “at risk individual”.
Physical/Technological Limitations
Another concern would be that of the physical or infrastructural limitations. However, this is a minor consideration. With the speed of technological development in this rapid information age, limits to technology and finances in implementing this solution would be easily overcome eventually with time, smart investments, ideas and partnerships.
Ethical, Moral and Legal Considerations
There might be a potential conundrum that arises in arresting someone before they have even done the physical act of the crime. Firstly, there would be “no crime” in the sense that the physical element of a crime is not yet present (i.e. in a predicted murder, the act that caused death has not been effected though there is certainly intention to do so). Secondly, this would negate the effect of free will and choice of a criminal who might at the last minute decide not to commit the crime.
However, with the aforementioned monitoring system through public infrastructure, this will enable us to more easily monitor an “at risk individual” such that we can decrease the gap of time between our arrest of the individual and his actual commission of crime. By arresting the individual right before he commits a crime, at a time when it is almost inevitable that he would not change his mind or when it is inevitable that the crime is going to occur, the ethical concerns mentioned above will be minimized. Also, certain criminalized conducts in the legal system are already slightly future-leaning, for example crimes such as Attempts (Penal Code Section 511 in Singapore) and Conspiracies (Penal Code Section 120 A, B) already punish an individual for crimes regardless of whether it was successfully completed or whether it was completed by another person respectively. As such, the legal system will most probably adjust adequately to the new issues posed by the future crime solving system.
Political Considerations
Some might contend that such a model of preemptive crime control would be abused by political powers and might even one day lead to a dystopian society controlled by “Thought Policing”.
In George Orwell’s critically acclaimed novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, the Thought Police is a secret police that use psychology and omnipresent surveillance to monitor, search, find and arrest members of society who could potentially challenge authority and status quo. They went the extra mile of uncovering and punishing “thought-criminals” for “thoughtcrime”, even if all that was done was think thoughts deemed “bad for society”.
However, the authors of this report believe that a rational view of the issue is required; together with holistic and reasoned risk assessment. Wide-ranging theories operating on fear of the unknown should not be allowed to impede the development of science for the good of humanity. Change and development is inevitable and hence what is necessary is to implement appropriate checks and balances to ameliorate possible concerns that arise. With technological advancement, increased knowledge can also improve our ability to solve ethical issues and avoid obstacles. This is much favoured in comparison to closing the door permanently in the face of possibility.
CHALLENGES