thoughts on Minorty Report

[graymalkn]

Last week I watched Minority Report again and it occurred to me: if it's possible to prevent all murders by showing up in time to stop them, why put people in jail/stasis? I mean it isn't like they're a danger to anyone - the very premise precludes it. It may mean a bit more work for detectives since the would-be killer might try again at some

Comments

[graymalkn]

I think the large majority of murders are crimes of passion (e.g. bar fights and jealous lovers) or convenience (e.g. killing someone to make a robbery easier). There might be a few who are dead-set on killing a certain person, but I think after a short while they'd get bored. Let's say you have one such person in custody for a few days to keep them from killing their intended victim. Assuming the window of foresight is about four days for premeditated crimes (which IIRC the movie assumes), once you let them out you can be certain that they'll be no trouble for four days. If they have a history of repeated attempted murder (or would it be attempted attempted murder?) the police might want to put a tracking device on them for convenience, but I think after a while they'd just get bored. If not, the occasional super-dedicated wannabe killer might have to locked up, but I think such cases would be vanishingly rare.

I was going to include an addendum to the original post saying that I'd like to see an anthology of short stories of various ways in which people try to outsmart the system, as we saw one example of in the movie.