minority report

minority report

The Importance of Minority Report in Society

1. The Definition and Purpose of Minority Report

The broad normative consensus over the principle’s function should facilitate its privileging as a consideration in the decision-making process of reconciling conflicting rights and interests, against potential abuse. One method to achieve this is through the influence on policy and legislation that has been suggested earlier. A more immediate strategy lies in the effective implementation of the principle within administrative and judicial processes of States and international organizations, often involving judicial bodies of a constitutional or human rights character. This necessitates that the principle is reliably interpreted and appropriately applied by decision-makers who bear the duties outlined by the norm, whether in the decision to engage in an international armed conflict, the conduct of military operations, or in the sanctioning and execution of measures with respect to enemy aliens. The availability of recorded practice from all these different areas of law provides scope for comprehensive study of the principle, and dialogue with practitioners and judges to aid its development and provide weight to its influence on future policy and judicial decisions. The requirement is conducive to creating a rich source of customary law in democratic nations that have transparent decision-making processes and an aversion to secrecy in international affairs, a point discussed further in considering State practice. A further possibility is the employment of the principle at a conceptual level within legal or political theory, to reconcile the rights of democratic peoples involved in armed conflict or belligerent measures with the general values underpinning human rights law, international humanitarian law and the law of collective security. This task is particularly complex and given the relatively recent articulation of the principle, its success or failure will only become evident through subsequent appraisal of the theory and principles that emerge to address practice in this area.

The analysis and application of the agreement by certain international criminal tribunals, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the recently adopted International Criminal Court, has revolved around the specific content and scope of the principle in a variety of situations. It has been held that it provides a valuable opportunity to come to grips with the causes of discord within our multicultural community, and in the Rwanda Tribunal the Prosecutor specifically noted the need to facilitate a genuine reconciliation between all Rwandan communities, and the restoration and maintenance of a peaceful life. These endorsements merely confirm the widely accepted view of the normative content and purpose of the principle, that it serves as a conflict prevention mechanism and a tool to facilitate reconciliation and long-term stability in divided societies, promoting the construction of sustainable peace.

2. The Role of Minority Report in Preventing Injustice

In the world of Minority Report, an as yet uncommitted crime is identified as an event that can be statistically predicted with a high degree of certainty. The precogs provide a determinate answer to the question of whether a person will or will not commit a specific act of crime. This is a clear departure from the partial and indeterminate intelligence that is all too often the basis for actions of crime prevention in today’s justice system. The story relies on an imagined future criminal justice tool, the precrime system devised by the future department of justice to prevent murder. This is accomplished by freeing potential murderers and enlisting counselors to prevent the foreseen homicide. At the core of the precrime system lies what the story presents as an infallible methodology of prediction also called precrime derived from the power of the precogs. This methodology is employed in all future/predicted murders made the specific target of preventing the crime.

The notion of pre-crime that underpins the short story “The Minority Report” carries with it both new and revolutionary ways of considering and preventing crime. An important task of the political science of the future should consider how the institutions and practices of pre-crime identified in Minority Report might be effectively integrated into existing criminal justice systems. Of course, the transition from a criminal justice system based on post-crime punishment to one based on the prevention of crime involves a profound paradigm shift. The essential tasks involved in preventing injustice in the future outlined by Minority Report depend on the accuracy and efficacy of an entirely new set of crime prediction and prevention tools, as well as a shift in focus away from the symptoms of crime to identifying its underlying causes.

3. The Ethical Implications of Minority Report

In the short run, the government would be preventing murders, but if murder is so pervasive in future society, it is unlikely that thousands of potential murderers will deter from their plans, making it impossible to completely eradicate the act of murder. Life imprisonment of people who have not yet committed a crime is clearly not maximizing the good for the greatest number, especially when considering the impact on the families of the “pre-convicts”. They would not only be deprived of family members, but they would also be forced to live with the knowledge of the predicted murder and the belief that the system has made an error. The film implies that the character Danny Witwer is such a “pre-convict” and would rather not fulfill his destiny. At one point, he questions Anderton saying, “Would you do something bad if you knew you could not be caught?” This is a question posed to all would-be criminals and is a criticism of the deterrence theory often associated with utilitarian practice in criminal justice.

This topic addresses the nature of government in the future depicted in Minority Report, which seemingly relies on utilitarian principles. The “precogs” are used to predict murders and allow police to arrest the future murderer before the act has taken place. From a utilitarian ethics standpoint, this would be considered a legitimate practice given that it maximizes good over bad for the greatest number. In the film, it is clear that the government is only concerned with preventing the murder, and they have “abolished” the concept of a murder taking place. The would-be murderer is incarcerated without trial or possibility of release, and a character in the film estimates the number of “false imprisonments” to be in the thousands. When the practice of preventing future murders is applied to the real world, the film seems to imply that the future is not a good one. John Anderton, who seeks to prevent his own predicted murder, observes that there are countless murder scenarios predicted for many different people. This would suggest that the future is not good if so many people are planning to kill, and also that the future murder rate remains constant given that pre-cogs predict murders indefinitely.

Utilitarianism and Minority Report

4. The Impact of Minority Report on Personal Freedom

This technology, and its use in a free society, is the main theme of the film “Minority Report”. In the year 2054 in the movie, future criminals are stopped before they have committed a crime, through the use of 3 Precogs who predict murders and the future murderer is arrested and detained. In the film, the reader is encouraged to consider the personal intrusion of PRE crime intervention. Tasked with seeing the end of the murder and the events leading up to it, Precrime police essentially uncover potential murderers who, if left alone, would not have committed a crime. Anderton is quick to assure that Precrime only deals with murder and the would-be murderers will receive merciful treatment. But is this the harsh truth, seeing as some of the people detained would never have actually committed the murder and it is their system of detention that molds said future events? And what of the would-be criminal that has a sudden epiphany and change of heart? Is he to be punished for a crime he almost committed, spending time in detention which will lead to loss of dignity and total effect on his future identity? The question is raised whether it is moral to punish a person for an act they have not yet committed, and is it right to play out the events in doing so. The answer from the victims of Precrime is that it is an intrusion on their freedom and basic human rights, and the proof of prevented murder does not justify detention of a potentially innocent person.

5. The Future of Minority Report and its Potential Benefits

The potential benefits of the minority report are not only for the justice system. With a future society having fewer criminals, victims and their families will have a better quality of life compared to a similar victim today. Measures of crime rate and convictions being accurate pegs for judgments on the efficacy of the justice system and the safety of society, it will be possible to obtain a much-improved reputation for justice systems globally, especially in places where records of crime and corruption are rampant. The definitive prevention of skilled criminals who are aware that their detection is near and will result in conviction may result in less crime, as such criminals may opt to use their skills for legal means. And surely the most speculative and utopian of ideals is that with evidence of prevention for crimes, there will be prevention of guilt and the act itself.

As mentioned, the system may provide an accurate tag to a suspect and given the opportunity to have the matter tried swiftly to discover guilt or innocence, this may prescribe a more efficient and suitable justice system compared to the traditional method of today. The absence of a criminal record for those who are found not guilty can be seen to outweigh the minority report tag and preventative custody, as it is apparent that criminal records are the reason for many failed job applications by ex-offenders. Though thorough discussion has been avoided due to the complex and speculative nature of the minority report, it is hoped that the potentially favorable methods suggested in this essay have demonstrated that preventative action does not have to manifest in an injustice and that it may bear benefits for future justice systems.

Justice is the upholding of rights and the punishment of wrongs. How to best prevent crime and ensure the rights of both the victim and the suspect are issues that have permeated justice systems throughout the ages and will continue to do so. Though the minority report has been based on an assumption of the guilty being prevented from committing a crime for which no physical evidence has been found (i.e., a victimless crime), it has the potential to improve the justice system as a whole. In its ideal form, the guilt of a suspect will not be pre-empted by prevention, which will, in turn, prevent wrongful conviction of innocents. Given that the prevention of a victimless crime has already occurred today with police merely suspecting someone who has committed no known crime, it is apparent that prevention is already underway. However, it is usually not until after the commission of another known offense with the same suspect that the matter is brought to trial and guilt is discovered. Due to the deterministic nature of physical evidence, harmless ex-offenders who commit victimless crimes after a recent acquittal will be spared news of a trial with the destruction of their future prospects. It is the hope of an ideal justice system that preventive action will only be taken against those who are indeed guilty.

It is hoped that with the adoption of the minority report system, new offences will be greatly mitigated by accusers knowing that the chances of avoiding detection and conviction are slim. As mentioned, the system may provide an accurate tag to a suspect and given the opportunity to have the matter tried swiftly to discover guilt or innocence, this may prescribe a more efficient and suitable justice system compared to the traditional method of today. The absence of a criminal record for those who are found not guilty can be seen to outweigh the minority report tag and preventative custody, as it is apparent that criminal records are the reason for many failed job applications by ex-offenders. Though thorough discussion has been avoided due to the complex and speculative nature of the minority report, it is hoped that the potentially favorable methods suggested in this essay have demonstrated that preventative action does not have to manifest in an injustice and that it may bear benefits for future justice systems.