Precrime

Precrime (today usually spelled "pre-crime") is a term coined by science fiction author Philip K. Dick. It is increasingly used in academic literature to describe and criticise the tendency in criminal justice systems to focus on crimes not yet committed. Pre-crime has been defined as 'substantive coercive state interventions targeted at non-imminent crimes'. Pre-crime intervenes to punish, disrupt, incapacitate or restrict those deemed to embody future crime threats. The term pre-crime embodies a temporal paradox, suggesting both that a crime has not occurred and that the crime that has not occurred is a foregone conclusion (McCulloch and Wilson 2016).

George Orwell introduced a similar concept in his 1948 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four using the term Thoughtcrime to describe illegal thoughts which held banned opinions about the ruling government or intentions to act against it. A large part of how it differs from precrime is in its absolute prohibition of anti-authority ideas and emotions, regardless of the consideration of any physical revolutionary acts. It should be noted, however, that Orwell was describing behaviour he saw in governments of his day as well as extrapolating on that behaviour, and so his ideas were themselves rooted in real political history and current events.

In Philip K. Dick's 1956 science fiction short story "The Minority Report", "Precrime" is the name of a criminal justice agency, the task of which is to identify and eliminate persons who will commit crimes in the future. The agency’s work is based on the existence of "precog mutants", a trio of "vegetable-like" idiots whose "every incoherent utterance" is analyzed by a punch card computer. As Anderton, the chief of the Precrime agency, explains the advantages of this procedure: "in our society we have no major crimes... but we do have a detention camp full of would-be criminals". He cautions about the basic legal drawback to precrime methodology: "We’re taking in individuals who have broken no law."

The concept was later popularized by Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report, adapted from the story.

Precrime in criminology dates back to the positivist school in the late 19th century, especially to Cesare Lombroso's idea that there are "born criminals", who can be recognized, even before they have committed any crime, on the basis of certain physical characteristics. Biological, psychological and sociological forms of criminological positivisms informed criminal policy in the early 20th century. For born criminals, criminal psychopaths and dangerous habitual offenders eliminatory penalties (capital punishment, indefinite confinement, castration etc.) were seen as appropriate (cf.Leon Radzinowicz/Roger Hood: A History of English Criminal Law, London 1986, pp. 231–387). Similar ideas were advocated by the Social Defense movement and, more recently, by what is seen and criticized as an emerging "new criminology" (Feeley/Simon 1992) or "actuary justice" (Feeley/Simon 1994). The new "pre crime" or "security society" requires a radically new criminology (Fitzgibbon 2004; Zedner 2007; Zedner 2009; Zedner 2010; Zedner 2014).

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