Red Flags and Precrime

I admit it: I’m a huge fan of sci-fi. From Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, to Gene Roddenberry and every single superhero movie to come out in the last decade, I just can’t get enough. The imagination, the spectacle, the endless possibilities of hope… and, of course, utopias and dystopias that teach us about the best and worst of humanity.



Minority Report starring Tom Cruise
Minority Report is one of my favorite classic sci-fi short stories turned movie. The Department of Precrime arrests and detains would-be criminals before they have the opportunity to commit the crime. The protagonist, a cop, is accused of an unlikely future murder, and in the process finds that the system is incredibly flawed. Every attempt to avert disaster creates new possible disasters.

Back to the real world. Crimes exist. Acts of terrorism, and mass shootings. As we look back on these events, it’s only natural to see signs that we wish we could have caught, that maybe we *should* have noticed. We can’t help but wonder, could this tragedy have been avoided? It's obvious now that these people had friends in bad places, what if they had not been allowed on that particular plane? This guy's neighbors all knew he was two peas short of a pod, what if someone had searched his house and found the guns? Like the people of Minority Report, we want to catch the criminal before bad things happen.

But there are barriers to prosecuting Precrime in reality, and for good reason. The 14th Amendment requires that no government can "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Liberty includes the freedom to travel; Property includes, yes, firearms. And due process of law includes the right to know that you have been accused, and the right to challenge the evidence in a fair trial. It was on these grounds that a federal judge recently found the FBI's official Terrorist Screening Database to be unconstitutional. It seems that putting people on a list which singles them out to be treated as criminals with no chance to be found either innocent or guilty is a problem. Who knew.

Red Flag laws are the latest popular attempt to do Precrime. And they are popular even in Republican circles. President Trump is on the record as saying that law enforcement should just take the guns, and worry about due process later. But wise law enforcement officials are already declaring their intentions to take a more cautious and Constitutional approach.

We generally agree that "the punishment should fit the crime". But if the crime never occurs, if it is purely hypothetical, what is the appropriate punishment? What if the situation was misread, and the dangerous person wasn't so dangerous after all? Benjamin Franklin wrote, “That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.”

And, as we learn from disasters, so do the wicked. Since airports and governments have implemented anti-bomb security in the last couple of decades, terrorists have taken to bombing outside of security checkpoints. More recent mass murderers at schools and other public places have planned their attacks with full knowledge of how their victims and police have been trained to respond. It seems that our attempts to brace for attack only create more weaknesses. It’s like that other classic sci-fi trope, the butterfly effect.

As an Eagle Scout for life, I do believe in being prepared. But one thing I have learned through hard experience is that true preparation doesn’t mean trying to predict and “head off” every bad thing that might happen. This is a sure road to a life of misery and paranoia. Rather, true emergency preparation means being ready to respond to the unpredictable with a cool head and all available resources. Anyone may be called upon by fate to be a hero. Imagine if all of us, not just those who are called to deal with emergencies professionally, had this attitude of readiness. I think, then, we could look forward to a safer, happier future.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Personal Voting Guide for Fall 2018