Perhaps the ministry that requires the least prejudice of
all is the Ministry of Justice. It takes
care of applying the laws created by the Lawmaking Ministry. In my view, it should have 3 functions,
similar to what we have today in most Western countries, but with some changes
in their operation:
- Law enforcement
- The courts
- Correctional facilities
I’ll take time to define these below and how they can be
optimized with minimized staff using high technology.
Law enforcement
Many new tools can be used today by police to alleviate some
of the dangers policemen face.
Autonomous drones, for example, can be deployed on the ground and in the
air, equipped with cameras, image recognition and interactive artificial
intelligence to serve as the eyes and ears of the police force. Drones like these have already been deployed
in several cities around the world experimentally.
Aerial drones are terrific tools for unobtrusive mobile
observation of areas and people of interest.
These can be deployed very quickly to follow individuals that require security
and chase criminals. In a pinch, these
drones can be remote controlled by human officers too.
Street drones can do this job too, but they can also
interact with individuals, answer questions, taking reports and record events
as they unfold before police officers get to a scene. Since it is more difficult for ground drones
to move around, each drone motility type can have its use in a police force.
Drones can also be used to support civilian first responders
when tragedy strikes and on the scenes of accidents as they happen by
identifying the accident and dispatching immediate help. They can deliver first aid kits and even
defibrillators to a first responder extremely quickly.
Automated drones can be used in other situations where
officers may be put in harm’s way, such as rescues, bomb disposal (remote
drones have been in use for this task for years already) and even as an
integral element of a SWAT team to enter buildings first, acting as a shield
for human officers.
These uses of robots and drones are available today, but ideally,
advancements in AI and robotics can increase their presence and replace more
human officers. There is plenty of
willingness to improve robot intelligence and flexibility in the field,
allowing them to work more and more independently, efficiently and with discernment.
AI software on its own can be extremely useful to remove
much of the administrative burden police officers deal with daily. It is a well-known fact that officers spend
up to half of their day doing administrative duties, from non-incident duties
training, handling complaints, paperwork, filings etc. All repetitive administrative tasks could be
offloaded to AI and the roughly 15% of an officer’s time spent on patrol could
be relegated to automated drones.[1] This would free up officer’s time doing
community engagement, education for crime prevention and investigating crimes.
Through the judicious development, deployment and use of artificial
intelligence technology, we could have a smaller police force that spends all
their time dealing with qualified incidents, investigating crimes and teaching
safety to the public. They can also do
their job in a safer manner: behind the shield of remote controlled or fully
automated robots.
One of the public’s complaint in North America about the police
is that they aren’t seen in public enough.
Part of crime prevention as well as giving a sense of security to the
public is police presence. The use of
drones and freeing 50% of police officer’s time from administrative duties
gives the police force much needed visibility in public.
On a final note, thanks to all the other changes recommended
in this book eliminating hunger and despair, the cost of crime can be severely
reduced, thus reducing the need for a sizeable police force in the first place. Dealing with the fundamental reason why
individuals end up committing crimes will be of primary importance for our
ideal society.
Research done by the University of Chicago shows child
poverty costs the United States $500 billion per year.[2] This includes lost earnings as well as health
care and the cost of crime. In a study organized
by Duke University in a Cherokee reserve in the US, where UBI was instituted
for a while, it was found that 40% fewer kids whose families received basic
income payments had behavioral problems compared to those who didn’t
participate in the cash delivery program.
Payments to the poorest Cherokee families reduced by 22% the odds
children would commit minor crimes by their late teenage years.[3] In Namibia, UBI was organized and deployed in
an impoverished city for 2 years and reduced crime rates by 42%.[4]
Therefore, to have an efficient, inexpensive and happy
police force serving the community, automation is key, but other social changes
to reduce social stresses that cause crime and anti-social behavior in the
first place.
The courts
After police apprehend offenders and when citizens wish to
resolve disputes, cases need to be resolved in court.
This whole system, must remain completely unbiased,
therefore judges and support staff must be selected through an equitable and
fair process. Some modern countries use
a voting system. Others appoint their
judges. In some countries, judges are
employees selected based on merit. It is
indeed difficult for human beings to be completely unbiased in the best
conditions because we naturally have opinions on just about any topic presented
to us. On the other hand, unbiased AI
won’t be sophisticated enough for several years to deal with the nuances confronting
judges daily. AI judges would be ideal
one day.
In the meantime, the selection of judges must be done
properly. If a voting system is used, it
must be like the system described to select ministry leadership: experts elect the judges without any
campaigning, parties or fundraising. If
judges are appointed, they must be appointed by an elected official that has
been voted in by citizen-experts.
Even though judges themselves cannot be easily replaced with
AI, today’s AI can be extremely efficient and useful to judges and lawyers
alike. AI is terrific at scouring
through large amounts of data. In this
case, they can be used to analyse precedents, keep up to date with changing
laws, regulations and opinion changes. Courts
and legal offices are filled with legal assistants whose jobs are almost
exclusively to research precedent to build cases. This is of course a burden on the system that
can be alleviated by artificial intelligence.
I believe private lawyers are needed consultants and can
help individuals in legal matters. They
can also offload much of the costs of the court system. Besides, most people will likely want the
option to choose who will help them in cases.
However, to have equality, legal counsel should be offered for free by
the state as not everyone can afford private sector legal advice. For the time being, AI is not yet ready to
take on that role because it does take some human empathy to be a good
lawyer.
The anticipated reduction in crime thanks to the reduction
of social stresses however should help keep the costs of the judicial system to
a minimum. The important point here is
to keep it fair.
Correctional
facilities
In most countries, individuals that have been found guilty
in serious crimes are incarcerated, separated from normal society. Presumably this is done either to punish criminals
or to ensure they cannot offend more people until they are rehabilitated.
The ideology is partially correct. On the one hand, dangerous individuals,
should be separated from others for security reasons. That is undeniably necessary. On a case by case basis, they can either be
placed in correctional facilities or in mental hospitals. The difference between the two should be
clear: individuals found in need mental
help by professionals, should be treated in a mental institution.
Rehabilitation for a mentally ill individual is supervised control of the
sickness or a cure.
Those who are not mentally sick but have anti-social
behaviors need to have their behaviors corrected before they are reinstated
into society. Anti-social behavior can
be an undiscovered mental problem, best relegated to the mental hospitals for
correction, medicine and so forth, or the criminal must be treated in a
different way.
One of the biggest issues with rehabilitating criminals using
the current correctional facilities is that these institutions tend to promote
further anti-social behavior from inmates and more so when sentences are
longer.[5] Isolating individuals with other unbalanced
offenders in a less than healthy environment doesn’t frequently lead to
producing well-balanced individuals that can lead positive lives outside of the
system.
As far as better correctional facilities, that truly serve
to rehabilitate offenders, there are some excellent models in the world. The country that has the lowest recidivism
rate is Norway. Norway’s incarceration
rate is just 75 per 100,000 people compared to the US’s 707 per 100,000. In Norway, only 20% of offenders are back in
the system within the next 5 years, whereas in the US that number is one of the
highest in the world at over 75%.[6] Experts believe the reason behind such great
differences in numbers between systems is that the Norwegian system relies on
the concept of repairing harm caused by crime instead of punishment. The system thus focuses on rehabilitating
prisoners and treating them as human beings.
Rehabilitating prisoners means creating “normal”
environments where prisoners feel like they are just living in a different area
for a while, until they are well enough to be reinserted into society. They are isolated from their loved ones and
their lives yes, but in an environment where they can balance their psyche
properly and get some personal stability, support and so on. In Norway, the prisons have no bars on the
windows. There are plenty of sharp
objects in the kitchen, where prisoners can cook their own meals, and they
don’t fear those objects will be used to harm them, or the very few guards. Once criminals are rehabilitated, they go
back to society more stable than when they went in. That is the rule. And in Norway, they go back to a society
supported by a well endowed social security system, adding to the insurance
that recently released offenders are much less likely to re-offend.
In an interview with The Guardian, Arne Wilson, a Norwegian clinical
psychologist explained:
“In closed prisons we
keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had
any real responsibility for working or cooking. In the law, being sent to
prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you
suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like
animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we
pay attention to you as human beings.”
Bottom line is if we want to counter crime, we need to treat
prisoners like human beings and give them the emotional and physical tools to
find balance, purpose, and healthy ways to deal with real life.
Only then will others be safe around convicts when they come out
of an institution. This is how our
society will change from being fearful of “ex-cons”, to treating them with
respect.
In my opinion, there should be no punishment for crimes. Only healing the sick and rehabilitating the
unbalanced until and only until the individual is fully rehabilitated.
I therefore recommend no minimum or maximum sentences for
incarceration and rehabilitation. An
offender should be institutionalised until expert professionals deem an
individual is fully rehabilitated, balanced and the chance for the individual to
revert to criminal behavior is a very low probability.
The total economic toll of mass incarceration in the United States
exceeds $1 trillion. That is roughly
equivalent to 1/6th of the American total federal revenues for a
year. Operation costs of all federal and
state prisons, plus running local jails costs the US government about $80 billion a
year.[7]
If the US, for example, would adopt a correctional system like
Norway’s, those costs would be reduced by a factor of 10.
If we want a safe society, run by an unbiased, inexpensive system,
first we must focus on treating both the enforcers and the citizens like human
beings. Our most basic wish as human beings is to be comfortable and happy. Police officers want to enjoy protecting
others and feel motivated to do just that without putting their lives unduly at
risk or doing repetitive tasks. Citizens
don’t want to worry about fairness in the system, their safety or to feel the
need to take matters in their own hands because of the absence of fair
enforcement, prosecution and surveillance.
We can do better.
Finally, private mental health and rehabilitation facilities can
work hand in hand while properly regulated.
They can be organized as not-for-profit organizations with government
oversight and regulation or public institutions.
[1]
Police officers spend nearly half their working day on paperwork and meetings
(April 2010). Daily Mail Reporter. - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1269405/Police-officers-spend-nearly-half-working-day-paperwork-meetings.html
[2]
Jarry J. Holzer et al. (March 2008) The
economic costs of childhood poverty in the United States. Journal of Children
and Poverty, Vol. 14, No. 1, 41-61.
[3]
John D. Sutter (March 2015) The argument
for a basic income. CNN - https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sutter-basic-income/index.html
[4]
Making the difference. Basic Income
Grant Pilot Project Assessment Report, April 2009 by the Basic Income Grant
Coalition.
[5]
Paul Gendreau et al. (March 1999). The effects of prison sentences on
recidivism. Public works and government
services Canada. - https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/ffcts-prsn-sntncs-rcdvsm/ffcts-prsn-sntncs-rcdvsm-eng.pdf
[6]
Christina Sterbenz (December 2014) Why
Norway’s prison system is so successful - http://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is-so-successful-2014-12
[7]
Matt Ferner (September 2016). The full
cost of incarceration in the U.S. is over $1 trillion, study finds. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/mass-incarceration-cost_us_57d82d99e4b09d7a687fde21
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