Reflection and Comments Regarding the Minority Report 2002

Reflection and comments regarding the Minority Report 2002

Terence Teoh

From the movie, I took great interest about the significance and logic about predicting the future and whether we can actually change a prediction. However, maybe that is a discussion for another time. There are too many overlapping issues to be able to address all of them completely and thoroughly. I understand that my views now are probably one-sided and narrow but I hope this will change as I learn more in school. Hence, I will be trying to reply to the questions 1, 2 and 4 directly with a general theme behind. I believe that it is extremely difficult to separate law from morality and that society’s values (reflected in law) is always trying to catch up with new technology.

With regards to the first question, in a case where there is a perfect system with good safeguards that can actually predict crimes accurately and consistently, I think there is a good argument to give up the presumption of innocence. The need for evidence will no longer be an issue, therefore reducing arguments about admissibility and sufficient evidence. The new role of lawyers will be to argue whether the crime committed in the vision is actually an offence, or if there is any mitigating factors. The investigating agencies will either be irrelevant, or required because crimes will be committed in such complexity that cannot be imagined. Crucially, this system must be perfect for society to change so much. Hence, the logical reason for the antagonist to commit crimes to maintain the integrity of the Precrime system. This leads me to 2 further thoughts. Firstly, what if the system is merely almost perfect? Secondly, does the possibility of saving many people justify the sacrifice of one person?

Many ethical questions will arise when there is technology that if fairly accurate and fairly consistent. One thought that occurred to me is that there is a choice between the presumption of innocence and the assumption of guilt (like in the movie). It may be simplistic, but I think this is a choice between the desire for low crime and the desire for human rights. I think there is a preference for the presumption of innocence when society enjoys relatively low crime and agree to give up human rights when the crime rate is high. This is evident during the founding years of Singapore where crime rate was high and detention without trial seemed more acceptable.

Regarding the second thought, it almost seems intuitive to agree that saving the lives of many is a sufficiently noble to warrant the sacrifice of one life. I think that the people in the movie were too quick to gasp in horror when it was revealed that the antagonist had committed murder. He saved many more lives than he sacrificed. Yet, this utilitarian approach is still wrong. Should a doctor kill a healthy person and use all the organs to save the lives