What is the future of criminal justice?
For probably as long as civilization has existed, kings and rulers have decreed laws forbidding certain acts and punishing those who commit them. For most of history, those punishments were extremely harsh. The death penalty was prescribed for a wide range of crimes. Other penalties included flogging, branding, and enslavement.
As society has become more enlightened, our legal codes have become more humane. The eye-for-an-eye-type punishments of the past are now viewed as a barbaric and intolerable throwback—relics of a less civilized age. Many countries have abolished capital punishment entirely. Even in countries that haven't, it's now reserved for the most serious crimes, typically only murder and high treason. The specific methods of execution, such as lethal injection, are also intended to be less harsh and less painful.
How much have we improved, really?
In nearly all countries, incarceration is the only means of criminal punishment still in common use. We may be tempted to congratulate ourselves on becoming more civilized, now that we've outlawed flogging, branding and the like.
However, there's room to question how much progress we've really made. Incarceration, in many cases, is not much better than past punishments. Many prisons are overcrowded, chaotic and violent. Human-rights abuses are widespread within their walls. Though the state no longer directly sentences offenders to brutal corporal harm, this often happens anyway at the hands of guards or other prisoners. Solitary confinement, in particular, is an awful practice that breaks down prisoners in body and mind. It's no less a form of torture, even if not a "violent" one.
Of course, many people also argue that the continuing use of capital punishment is morally unacceptable, no matter how “humane” the method (if such a word can even apply to any means of ending a person's life).
Conversely, other people argue that we're already too lax, in regards to some prisoners at least. When a prisoner receives a life sentence instead of death, for instance, they may remain dangerous to both their fellow prisoners and guards, not to mention keeping criminal links outside prison.
Is it possible to do better?
While losing one's liberty will never be a pleasant experience, it seems that prisons don't inherently have to be violent or squalid. The Scandinavian countries offer a potential example for other nations to copy. In countries such as Norway, prisons are less punitive, focused on rehabilitation rather than the infliction of constant punishment. The results speak for themselves, as studies have shown that these countries have lower crime rates and lower rates of recidivism.
If the Scandinavian approach were used everywhere, we might obtain similarly good results. However, it may not be as easy as that. It may prove to be the case that cultural factors unique to Scandinavia are why this system works so well for them, and that it would be difficult for other nations to copy it.
Technological progress in criminal justice
How might our improving technology be used in attempts to tackle crime? We can never predict what will develop in the future, but some possibilities can be glimpsed.
The first is with the beginning of any criminal prosecution: identifying the suspects.
In this realm, one technological revolution has occurred already. Since the 1980s, DNA testing has added a powerful new tool in the toolbox of criminal investigation. Criminals such as the Golden State Killer, who evaded justice for decades, were identified and captured thanks to DNA evidence.
DNA testing has even wider reach with the advent of genealogical databases. Even if the criminal has no DNA on file that crime-scene evidence can be tested against, they can often be identified by matching with the DNA of their relatives.
Importantly, DNA hasn't only helped to convict the guilty. It's also exposed serious errors in the criminal justice system, freeing hundreds of innocent people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Some of them were on death row. Many of the wrongfully convicted were people of color, and in that regard, DNA evidence offers an objective counterpoint to racism and other bias in the justice system.
What other forms of technology might provide a tool for identifying the guilty or ruling out the innocent? One possibility is brain scanning. Though this is still in the realm of science fiction for now, it's conceivable that scientists could develop a brain scan that would detect whether a person is lying or telling the truth.
Even if this technology came into existence, in the U.S. at least, such tests would have to remain voluntary under constitutional law. We'd also have to study the technology rigorously to ensure that it gives reliable results, and wasn't a subjective and unscientific procedure like the lie detector (which is generally inadmissible in criminal trials, even though lie detector tests continue to be used in some industries).
Surveillance technology has also improved, becoming widespread as it gets cheaper and more powerful. In many places, police officers are now required to wear body cams, which help to create more transparency and accountability. Most ordinary people now carry video-capable smartphones, which play a similar role in documenting police conduct.
It likely won't be long before every public place is covered by cameras equipped with facial recognition and other means of biometric identification. This may have a deterrent effect for criminals, who can't escape being caught on video. On the other hand, will it make us all more reluctant to express ourselves, knowing that we can't escape the surveillance state? Will it have a chilling effect on protests and other free expression?
The most distant hypothetical possibility, and also the most dangerous, is direct behavioral modification of criminals—through drugs, brain surgery, or other methods. Such a procedure has long been a staple of fiction. Arguably, we're drawing closer to this through the increasing availability of pharmaceuticals to cure the subset of mental illnesses that cause violent behavior. However, so far there's no all-purpose cure for criminality.
If such a thing were invented, society would have to grapple with whether it could ever be used ethically. A simple pill to cure criminal behavior, without the squalor and brutality of the past, would have undeniable appeal. However, fiction has consistently treated this as a frightening, nightmarish possibility (in works like A Clockwork Orange, for instance). There's an understandable fear that the technology would be used for dystopian purposes, like brainwashing dissidents or mandating conformity to the state's will.
It may be that courts of the future will have to rule to uphold rights, like the right of free will, that today we don't recognize as needing protection. As technology improves the scope of what's possible, our ethics and our legal systems will have to evolve to keep pace with it. Humanity has, for the most part, grown wiser and more humane over the ages, but that trend will only continue if we keep demanding better.
