No, this is not a post about marriage. This story in the Daily Mail says we could sentence people to jail for 1,000 years or at least make it feel that way.
Sentencing a criminal to 1,000 years in an artificial hell may one day become a reality.
At least, that is the claim of scientists at Oxford University who have been exploring controversial technologies that could extend human life.
They say billions are being invested in techniques that could mean the cruellest criminals will be kept alive indefinitely in condition befitting their crime.
According to their research, prison firms could also develop drugs that make time pass slowly, making an inmate’s sentence feel like an eternity.
Last year, a team of scientists led by Rebecca Roache began exploring technologies that could keep prisoners in an artificial hell.
‘Some crimes are so bad they require a really long period of punishment, and a lot of people seem to get out of that punishment by dying,’ Dr Roache told Ross Andersen in Aeonmagazine.
Dr Roache highlights what she describes as the ‘laughably inadequate’ sentence of 30 years in prison for Magdelena Luczak and Mariusz Krezolek.
Doctor Roache sounds like an eleven on the vindictive bitch meter. Holy cripes. We all feel like meting out rough justice once in a while, but this is a whole new level.
The pair were convicted of murdering Luczak’s four year-old son, Daniel, who was beaten, starved and tortured before his death.
On her Practical Ethics blog, Dr Roache notes that Luczak and Krezolek will receive the humane treatment that Daniel never did.
‘They will, for example, be fed and watered, housed in clean cells, allowed access to a toilet and washing facilities, allowed out of their cells for exercise and recreation,’ she writes.
OK, they are monsters. In America, they would be fed to the other prisoners and probably killed in a few years time. In American jails, killing child molesters and child killers is a good way for a lifer to score points with the right prison gang.
Turning to human engineering as a possible solutions, Dr Roache looks at the idea of life span enhancements so that a life sentence in prison could last hundreds of years.
‘Dr Aubrey de Grey, co-founder of the anti-ageing Sens research foundation, believes that the first person to live to 1,000 years has already been born,’ she said.
‘The benefits of such radical lifespan enhancement are obvious – but it could also be harnessed to increase the severity of punishments’
As well as extending life, Dr Roache noted that there are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people’s sense of time.
She said that society might not be far off developing a pill that could make someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence.
‘Of course, there is a widely held view that any amount of tinkering with a person’s brain is unacceptably invasive,’ she said. ‘But you might not need to interfere with the brain directly.’
Time distortion, for instance, is already a technique used in interrogation, where people are exposed to constant light, or unusual light changes, so that they can’t tell what time of day it is.
Another scenario being explored by the group is uploading the criminal’s mind to a digital realm to speed up the 1,000 year sentence.
‘As the technology required to scan and map human brain processes improves, some believe it will one day be possible to upload human minds on to computers,’ Dr Roache said.
This means that with sufficient computer power, it would be possible to speed up the rate at which an uploaded mind runs.
Similarly, uploading the mind of a convicted criminal and running it a million times faster than normal would enable the uploaded criminal to serve a 1,000 year sentence in eight-and-a-half hours.
‘This would, obviously, be much cheaper for the taxpayer than extending criminals’ lifespans to enable them to serve 1,000 years in real time,’ said Dr Roache.
If these technologies are developed, one crime that could ever justify eternal imprisonment was something that would endanger mankind.
‘Suppose there was some physics experiment that stood a decent chance of generating a black hole that could destroy the planet and all future generations,’ said Dr Roache.
‘If someone deliberately set up an experiment like that, I could see that being the kind of supercrime that would justify an eternal sentence.’
This is mostly nonsense and Doctor Roache should change her name to Mengele. There’s nothing to be gained by tormenting criminals. Slowing down time to make the prisoner’s life more miserable will only make them more violent. Until we have robot guards running automated prisons, this is counter-productive. The prison guard unions will never allow us to build robot prison guards so this is never happening.
What I always thought would be wise is to think about how to make prisoners more docile. Eastern European jails actually try to do this by letting prisoners run their own area to a limited extent. They also segregate the hell out of their jails to keep tribalism to a minimum. American jails would be infinitely less violent if they were segregated. That’s the first thing that should happen. Put all the blacks in their own system, run by black guards and administrators. That takes race out of the equation. In smaller jurisdictions it may be tougher, but you can segregate the prison itself. Black guards work the black wing and white guards in the white wing.
The other thing we should do is bring back penal colonies. The guys and gals facing life should be packed off to a colony somewhere to live. If they kill each other so be it. Housing people serving life with prisoners we theoretically want to see come back into society is madness. The cost of housing them has to be higher than packing them off to an island somewhere. Make sure they have food and water, but otherwise they are on their own to figure it out. I bet an African country would gladly take them for a fee. Equatorial Guinea sounds good.
Therein lies another issue. Sentencing a 20-year old man to thirty years in jail is foolish. In theory he gets out in his 50′s with some life left to live. In reality he gets out with no chance to actually live that life. I think that’s why the parole system works as it does, letting the guy out long before the sentence is served. In many states a 30 year sentence gets the criminal out in 15. Sentences need to be honest. People committing serious violent crime should be sent off to the colony. Non-violent offenders get shorter sentences and maybe longer probation periods.
Of course, the thing that should be done today is all of the illegal aliens, some 400,000 of them, should be shipped back to their home countries immediately. There’s simply no reason to keep these people in our jails.
If a penal colony is a non-starter, then maybe science is the answer. Instead of torturing them like Doctor Roache suggests, keep them drugged and fat. There’s got to be a way to dope their food or the water so they are always a little loopy. Make sure they get loads of calories so they fatten up. Fat sleepy guys are less trouble than cut dudes with energy to burn. Heck, putting them in a suspended state for their sentence would be great. When they were released, it would seem like they time traveled. Their families will have had no way to stay in contact so you avoid all of those issues.
In all seriousness, the way America handles the defective population is in need of radical overhaul. When I say defective, I mean the criminal are naturally criminal. That’s another way of saying crime is genetic, specifically a mutated variant of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene. That’s a topic off-limits for a very long time. Back in the 1980′s NIH stopped funding any and all research into genetics and crime. They feared it was just eugenics under a new name. That’s changed and the evidence is piling up that we are 90% hard coded and maybe 10% variable. Certain environment agents may trigger certain human behavior, but the the genetic bit has to be there for the reaction to occur.
This evidence is working its way into the courtroom and the criminal justice system. Put aside the sci-fi nonsense about testing for criminals in the womb. Let’s just assume uncontrollable and unpredictable violence is geneticly driven. The guy who flips out in the beer line and punches the beer attendant is naturally that way. No amount of anger management or talk therapy is going to alter his genetic code. Certain conditions that occur commonly in society will trigger unpredictable violent outbursts in the guy. What’s the point of punishing him? What’s the point of letting him out of jail? Holding him accountable for his actions is like blaming fish for swimming.
That brings me back to the penal colony. Society cannot tolerate violent people roaming free. If there is no way to reform them, there’s no point in having a place called a “correctional facility” in which to house them. The only rational thing to do is segregate them. A penal colony is the best approach. Find a suitable island like Haiti, clear it out and put your prisoners there for safe keeping. Air drop supplies into them, but otherwise they spend their lives there with the other ultra-violent.
While on the subject of sci fi:
http://tinyurl.com/pgd8ffw
“The Future of Brain Implants”
“How soon can we expect to see brain implants for perfect memory, enhanced vision, hypernormal focus or an expert golf swing?”
I have always thought that the Russian Tsars had the right idea with exile to Siberia. there is no need for drunk drivers to be in jail, send them to colonies where they cannot drive. similarly, pedophiles don’t need to be behind walls, send them to colonies with no children around. drop them food and building materials, let them just hang out,.