REBECCA ROACHE
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The future of punishment: a clarification

25/3/2014

10 Comments

 
I’m working on a paper entitled ‘Cyborg justice: punishment in the age of transformative technology’ with my colleagues Anders Sandberg and Hannah Maslen. In it, we consider how punishment practices might change as technology advances, and what ethical issues might arise. The paper grew out of a blog post I wrote last year at Practical Ethics, a version of which was published as an article in Slate. A few months ago, Ross Andersen from the brilliant online magazine Aeon interviewed Anders, Hannah, and me, and the interview was published earlier this month. Versions of the story quickly appeared in various sources, beginning with a predictably inept effort in the Daily Mail, and followed by articles in The Telegraph, Huffington Post, Gawker, Boing Boing, and elsewhere. The interview also sparked debate in the blogosphere, including posts by Daily Nous, Lauren Kirchner, Polaris Koi, The Good Men Project, Filip Spagnoli, Brian Leiter, Rogue Priest, Luke Davies, and Ari Kohen, and comments and questions on Twitter and on my website. I’ve also received, by email, many comments, questions, and requests for further interviews and media appearances. These arrived at a time when I was travelling and lacked regular email access, and I’m yet to get around to replying to most of them. Apologies if you’re one of the people waiting for a reply.
          I’m very happy to have started a debate on this topic, although less happy to have received a lot of negative attention based on a misunderstanding of my views on punishment and my reasons for being interested in this topic. I respond to the most common questions and concerns below. Feel free to leave a comment if there's something important that I haven’t covered.
Do you want to torture prisoners?
No. I don’t endorse any of the punishment methods mentioned in the Aeon interview or in the other media coverage. Considering futuristic punishment methods is an exercise in philosophy, not a proposal for the reform of the criminal justice system. The dystopic punishment methods discussed in the interview interest me because of the philosophical questions they raise about punishment practices. These questions include: Is it important for punishment to be unpleasant? What makes a punishment inhumane? If we could use technology to ‘calibrate’ punishments to ensure that the subjective experience of a particular punishment is similar for anyone who receives this punishment, is this something we should do? Should prison sentences be increased as average lifespan increases, just as fines have increased as average wealth has increased? What are the legitimate aims of punishment? When is it acceptable to deny someone access to a particular technology as part of their punishment, and when is doing so an impermissible infringement of their rights? In what way is remorse important, and would pharmacologically-induced remorse be as good as spontaneous remorse?
          The recent media coverage creates the impression that I’m interested solely in thinking up new methods of punishment, but the focus of the paper I'm writing with Anders and Hannah is much more general than this. We’re interested in how technology and punishment practices might come to interact in the future, and some of the ways this might happen could be unintentional. Imagine, for example, that mobile phone technology evolves so that instead of having a handset to carry around, many people have a chip implanted under their skin that performs roughly the same function that mobile phones perform today. Would it be ethically acceptable to remove such an implant from prisoners? On the one hand, future governments—like current ones—might have good reasons for believing it important to restrict prisoners’ ability to communicate with the outside world, and they might use these reasons to justify removing the implant. On the other hand, removing such an implant would involve surgery, probably without consent in most cases. This would be difficult to justify, and we might reasonably worry about where it might lead: if we accept that the state can perform surgery on a non-consenting criminal for the purpose of removing an implant, might this open the door to other uses of compulsory surgery or invasive treatments?
          Another interesting issue is that, even if technology is harnessed to devise new punishment methods, it might not be clear how the new methods compare to old methods. Radical lifespan enhancement might enable us to send people to prison for hundreds of years, but would this be a more severe punishment than current life sentences, or a less severe one? On the one hand, longer prison sentences are more severe punishments than shorter prison sentences, so a 300-year sentence would be a more severe punishment than a 30-year one. On the other hand, consider that many prisoners sentenced to death in the US appeal to have their death sentences converted to life sentences. This suggests that a longer sentence is viewed by prisoners who are sentenced to death as less severe than a shorter sentence (followed by execution). I made this point in the Aeon interview, and some people took me to be rejecting the idea of technologically-extended life sentences on the ground that this would be too lenient, and therefore bad. In fact, my point was that it might not always be obvious how technologically-induced changes in a punishment affect its severity.

You’re only pretending to care about ethically assessing futuristic punishments. You don't really care about this.
No, I really do think that it is extremely important ethically to assess future technologies before they are developed. Six years ago, I published an academic paper arguing for exactly this claim (‘Ethics, speculation, and values’, which you can read here if you’re interested).
         Possibly this accusation arises from inaccurate reports in the media that I am a scientist, and/or that I’m in charge of a team of scientists. That might have given people the impression that I’m involved in actually developing technologies for the purpose of modifying punishments. In fact I’m a philosopher, not a scientist, and I’m not in charge of anyone.

Only an evil person could think up the punishments you describe.
I find the claim, implied here, that it is morally wrong to entertain certain thoughts disturbing and implausible. But if thinking up dystopic punishment methods makes me evil, I am in good company. As several people have pointed out, various science fiction authors have described punishments very similar to the ones mentioned in the Aeon interview and in my original blog post. An episode of Star Trek deals with a method of punishment resembling the mind uploading scenario I described in the blog, in which prisoners’ minds could be ‘sped up’ to enable them to serve a subjectively long virtual sentence in just a few minutes or hours of real time. And Vernor Vinge’s novel, Marooned in Real Time, describes a method of ‘freezing’ criminals in time so that punishment can be delayed. I doubt that anyone seriously believes that the authors of such punishment scenarios are evil.

Why do you focus on retributive punishments? Are you a retributivist?
We don’t focus solely on retributive methods—even the Aeon interview discusses rehabilitation—but I think the most interesting philosophical questions are raised by retributive issues, so we devote more attention to considering those.
          A bit of background: retribution is a reactive form of punishment. It aims to punish criminals by imposing on them a deprivation proportional to the seriousness of the crime they’ve committed. Traditionally conceived, pure retribution does not aim at bringing about a particular consequence, such as rehabilitation or deterrence. Because of this, we might call retributive punishments non-consequentialist. (To complicate matters, however, more recent theories of retribution hold that the purpose of punishment is to convey censure to criminals. This is not a purely non-consequentialist conception of retribution.)
        In reality, punishments tend not to be purely retributive. They are usually partly consequentialist, in that they aim at producing a particular effect. The practice of imprisoning people for crimes is partly consequentialist in that it aims at deterring others from committing similar crimes. The practice of issuing community service orders (as, for example, when people caught spraying graffiti on public property are made to remove the graffiti as a punishment) is partly consequentialist in that it aims at having criminals make amends for their wrongs. Despite being consequentialist, these methods also have a retributive element: they involve imposing a deprivation on criminals that is proportional to the serious of the crime committed, and that is deserved by the criminal.  The ideas of proportionality and desert are characteristic of retributive punishment.
          Whilst it is the primary motivation of justice systems like that of the UK, retribution is controversial. There is a sense in which it captures the essence of punishment—particularly the ideas of proportionality and desert, which are central to our intuitions of what punishment is about—but since pure retribution, traditionally conceived, does not aim at producing any positive effect (or, indeed, any particular effect at all), its ‘eye for an eye’ approach can seem primitive and unjustifiable.
          Now, if we are consequentialists about punishment in that we wish to use punishment primarily as a means for achieving certain ends (such as deterrence, rehabilitation, making amends), then the use of futuristic technology in punishment does not raise any particularly interesting ethical issues about punishment. If we’re just interested in consequences, then all we need to do in order to settle the ethical issues is to gather empirical data about which technologies help us to achieve the best consequences, and use methods that incorporate those technologies.
         By contrast, non-consequentialist concerns raise a number of interesting questions, such as those mentioned at the beginning of my answer to the first question, above. These issues are not novel, but they are raised in an interesting new way by viewing punishment through the lens of the future. Considering non-consquentialist concerns is relevant not only for retributivists, but also for consequentialists, since even consequentialists about punishment are interested in some non-consequentialist issues such as proportionality and desert. For example, few consequentialists would think it acceptable to frame an innocent person for murder and punish them with life imprisonment, even if there was reason to believe that doing so would be a good way of effecting desirable consequences, such as deterring would-be murderers. That consequentialists would view this as unacceptable indicates that they think that desert is an important aspect of punishment, and desert is a retributive notion.
         As to the extent to which I’m a retributivist, I’m still trying to decide. I’m certainly not a pure retributivist: I don’t believe that retribution is the only legitimate purpose of punishment, but I’m open to the idea that retribution is important. That’s not to say that I’m unsympathetic to the view that it seems more constructive to aim at positive ends than to punish reactively. But there is a sense in which the retributive aspect of punishment is more respectful of people and more affirming of their capacities as rational agents than consequentialist approaches: by not aiming primarily at bringing about a certain consequence, retribution (unlike consequentialist approaches) does not treat criminals as means to an end. On a more practical level, it could be that retributive punishment is important for social stability: we might see more vigilante activity if the state did not satisfy people's desire for retribution by ensuring that criminals suffered appropriately for their crimes. The importance of such considerations, and the extent to which they justify retributive punishments, is something that I’m still considering.

Have you been misrepresented?
Media coverage has played a significant role in distorting my views: various re-hashings of the Aeon interview on other websites have created an impression that I’m in favour of implementing shockingly severe punishments—and, in some cases, that I’m a scientist actually involved in developing such punishments. What has been lost in this coverage is the distinction between philosophically evaluating an idea, and endorsing it. As I have said above, I don’t endorse any of the punishment methods I’m considering with Anders and Hannah. Indeed, the disturbing thought that futuristic technologies might be unthinkingly incorporated into our criminal justice practices without prior ethical assessment is one of my motivations for wanting to work on this topic.

Are you annoyed at the response you’ve received?
I’m delighted to have started a debate about this issue, and I welcome intelligent responses from people who either agree or disagree with me. Most of the responses I’ve received have fallen into this category. I’ve engaged with people who have written responses on Twitter and on their blogs, and I’m happy that so many people have found the issue stimulating.
          I’m less happy to be misunderstood as endorsing the futuristic punishment methods mentioned in the Aeon interview. This post is an attempt to correct that misunderstanding.
10 Comments
Adam Whybray
26/3/2014 04:54:28 am

Thank you for the clarifications. I think some of the newspaper coverage misrepresented what you were saying. I still stand by my previous comments regard why I think the development of such technology would be immoral however (with a possible caveat for if humans were all living for hundreds of thousands of years across the board).

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Rebecca Roache
26/3/2014 07:05:27 am

I'm not sure that it's likely that the technology would be developed solely for the purpose of using in punishment. We're focusing on how the development of technologies for other purposes (lifespan enhancement, emotional enhancement, implants of various descriptions, mind uploading) might affect punishment practices, either intentionally or otherwise.

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Joshuah Kuttenkuler
26/3/2014 07:13:11 am

I, too, thank you for clarification and agree that modern newspapers and/or journalism greatly distorts and hypes the implications of the theories and claims of scientific researchers and/or general theorists. Some would go so far as to equate your futurethink with the current reality having universal dystopian clockwork orange-esqe behavior.

I, too, stand by my thoughts regarding what I think of this potential
technology, which is to say that the human mind instinctively adapts to circumstances and consistently tries to stop harm. Consequentialist punishment must correlate to an immediate availability of the means for the individual to change and means to
measure that change. Any punishment that goes on long enough or is severe enough loses all meaning and cannot be factored into a
rational model of consequences. Your next move at this state is to consider and develop a theory that individually evaluates and calibrates the severity of punishment to most optimally impact
the mind of the individual, not too long, or the feedback loop will be
automatically terminated, but also not too short, where it would fail
to significantly register in the consciousness of the individual in relation to all other elements that they weigh their morals or ethics
on. I also stand by my thought that this drug would be great for sex!


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Nuclear Wheelchair
26/3/2014 08:29:04 am

Wait, you want to punish criminals by extending their subjective lifespan? Won't law abiding citizens be jealous that criminals get to live longer than they do?

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Rebecca Roache
26/3/2014 09:31:30 pm

I had hoped that it would be adequately clear from the post on which you are commenting that I don't endorse punishing criminals by extending their lifespan. If lifespan enhancement technology were available, I assume it would be available to the whole population, and not merely used in punishment. To withhold it from law abiding citizens while using it on criminals would, as you imply, be outrageous.

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Nuclear Wheelchair
27/3/2014 03:21:03 am

If you slow time down for a prisoner you'll be extending their subjective lifespan, won't you?

Rebecca Roache
27/3/2014 08:11:35 pm

'If you slow time down for a prisoner you'll be extending their subjective lifespan, won't you?'

I took your initial comment to refer to the possibility of extending their actual lifespan.

I guess you could either be referring to the possibility of giving prisoners drugs to make time drag, or uploading their minds to a computer and speeding them up so that they really do experience more years/hours/minutes of subjective time than elapses in real time.

If the technology were to exist, there seems little reason to deny it to the general population if they want it, rather than keep it just for prisoners, in which case there would be no need for everyone to be jealous of prisoners. But - in contrast to straightforwardly extending people's ('objective') lifespans - I think it's less obvious that these technologies would be attractive. Having time drag seems, in particular, to be of dubious value: even without fancy technology, time often seems to pass more slowly when we're very bored, but I've never heard anyone conclude that at least their boredom has extended their subjective lifespan. Mind uploading might be more attractive to some - many transhumanists are excited by the idea. I'm not sure I'd go for it, myself.

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J Hawkins
27/3/2014 03:57:26 am

Hi, I was one of the people who emailed you, what I hope, was a reasonable response to the media coverage.

I understand your aims and they kind of got lost in the media coverage. I also understand your interest/focus. However, what about how technology could be used to help victims? For example - to remove traumatic memories or to reduce their emotional response to them. If this was possible, then how would this impact "fair" punishments?

Also, in the case of mentally ill criminals (who committed crimes due to their illness), if there was a way to "fix their brains" so that they no longer ill, how might this impact "punishment"?

Reply
Rebecca Roache
27/3/2014 08:32:16 pm

These are interesting points, J. The issue of removing traumatic memories from crime victims is an interesting possibility. On the one hand, preventing someone from having to endure traumatic experiences is a good thing (traumatised crime victims sometimes seek psychiatric treatment for exactly this reason). On the other hand, if it were very easy to remove traumatic memories, this itself could raise some concerns. For example, currently, one relevant consideration in assessing the seriousness of a given crime is its effect on the victim. It would be concerning if, say, rape came to be seen as a less serious crime because the ease of removing victims' traumatic memories meant that the lasting effects of the crime ended up being less extensive than they are currently. More generally, we might worry that all crime might come to seem less serious if technology were to enable us to ‘wipe clean’ the minds of the traumatised victims. I guess some might argue, on consequentialist grounds, that crime really would be less serious in this event, since its consequences would not be so bad. Personally, I’d be inclined strongly to resist this view.

We discuss your second point in our paper. Many argue that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their crimes. If that's the case, then whilst it might be important to imprison them as a way of preventing them from harming people, it may be inappropriate to view their imprisonment as a form of retributive punishment. If it were possible to 'cure' psychopaths, there are reasons to welcome this—although, obviously, if possible it would be good to do this before they commit a crime rather than after, in which case the punishment issue is less relevant. Having said that, I think we'd have to tread carefully to avoid sliding into a dystopic scenario where psychiatric treatment is abused for political ends. The law currently allows certain people (including psychopaths) to receive psychiatric treatment without their consent. Whilst curing dangerous psychopathy might be seen as a good thing even without the consent of the subject, it would be important to introduce measures to ensure that merely disruptive individuals did not end up receiving psychiatric treatment without consent. This notoriously happened in Soviet-era psychiatry, and something similar is portrayed in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

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idm full crack link
13/5/2015 12:53:46 am

Thank you for the clarifications. I think some of the newspaper coverage misrepresented what you were saying.

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