Precrime

Precrime is a term that was invented by the science fiction author Philip K. Dick. He is increasingly in the criminological literature ( mostly in the spelling of "pre- crime" ) used to describe a change in the object of modern systems of criminal justice and to criticize at the same time.

Term

" Precrime " was announced by Stephen Spielberg 's film Minority Report in 2002, the back of the same short story from 1956 on Philip K. Dick. In this story is " Precrime " the name of a criminal law authority which has the task of identifying persons and to eliminate, which will commit criminal offenses in the future. The work of this authority is based on the existence of " Precogs " people with visionary skills that kept artificially in a vegetable state and their brain waves are analyzed by computers. Anderton, the head of the authority, explains the advantages of this process: " In our society, there is no greater crime ... but we have a holding facility full of potential offenders ."

Pre -crime in criminology

The idea to deal with potential offenders, goes back to the positivist school in the 19th century, not least to Cesare Lombroso's idea of the " born criminal ", which one can recognize certain physical characteristics. In the early 20th century biological, psychological and sociological forms of criminological positivism influenced the state's criminal policy. For " born criminals ", "criminal psychopaths " and " dangerous habitual criminals " different methods of " harmless " (Franz Liszt ) were propagated: death penalty, detention for an indefinite period, castration, etc. (see Radzinowiöcz 1991). One hundred years later can be a tendency to " actuarial justice " find ( Feely / Simon 1994), ie to a criminal justice system that is not based on more concrete finding of guilt, but based on probability statements about classes of potential perpetrators. The evolving new " security company" or " pre -crime society" requires a new critical criminology ( Zedner 2007).

Pre -crime in practice

In the past, the conviction and punishment required the proven existence of a criminal offense. This self -evident basis of a constitutional criminal law is left when sanctions for not even crimes committed can be imposed. Inkeri Antilla, later Minister of Justice of Finland, this development in an early article ( Antilla 1975), using the example of preventive detention criticized. Instead of " Precogs " enter the court-appointed experts here. Approaches this can be found for quite some time in the practice of parole or suspension of a criminal remainder on probation, Clearest example of this modern tendency of the call for a " subsequent preventive detention " as introduced in Germany in 2004 and 2009 from European Court of Human Rights was criticized as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Instead of the complete removal is in the coalition agreement of November 2013, considered making this practice under the name of " subsequent therapy Housing" on a new legal basis. Other practical examples of pre -crime can be found in the police dragnet and procedure of profiling, but also in the practice of fighting terrorism ( McCulloch / Pickering ).