Time Dilation Drug Could Let Heinous Criminals Serve 1,000 Year Sentences

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Like something out of the movie Inception, Rhiannon Williams reports in the Telegraph that Dr. Rebecca Roache, in charge of a team of scholars focused upon the ways futuristic technologies might transform punishment, claims the prison sentences of serious criminals could be made worse by distorting prisoners' minds into thinking time was passing more slowly. 'There are a number of psychoactive drugs that distort people's sense of time, so you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence,' says Roache. Roache says when she began researching this topic, she was thinking a lot about Daniel Pelka, a four-year-old boy who was starved and beaten to death by his mother and stepfather.

'I had wondered whether the best way to achieve justice in cases like that was to prolong death as long as possible. Some crimes are so bad they require a really long period of punishment, and a lot of people seem to get out of that punishment by dying. And so I thought, why not make prison sentences for particularly odious criminals worse by extending their lives?' Thirty years in prison is currently the most severe punishment available in the UK legal system. 'To me, these questions about technology are interesting because they force us to rethink the truisms we currently hold about punishment. When we ask ourselves whether it's inhumane to inflict a certain technology on someone, we have to make sure it's not just the unfamiliarity that spooks us,' says Roache. 'Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free? When we ask that question, the goal isn't simply to imagine a bunch of futuristic punishments — the goal is to look at today's punishments through the lens of the future.'"

Comments

Ridiculous.

[Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki]

That's ridiculous. If we wanted to cause as much damage to the criminals as possible, why not simply reinstate torture?

That's basically what she seems to want.

(no we shouldn't do that)

Re:Ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

This. ... "and a lot of people seem to get out of that punishment by dying"

They didn't get out of anything, they're dead.

Re: Ridiculous.

[AvitarX]

That's what I was thinking. The whole summary made me sick. Justice isn't a code word for vengence.

There's an argument to be made for execution, if someone is deemed beyond redemption, but to invent drugs to extend punishment is horrible. Unless the idea is someone can be released in a week, and become productive rather than a drain on society.

Re:Ridiculous.

[hawkinspeter]

Absolutely. If they are going to use drugs to exact harsher "punishment", then they might as well start looking for a drug that causes intense pain and suffering. While they're about it, why don't they semi-starve the prisoners and ensure that they can never get more than a few minutes sleep.

This is the most objectionable story I've ever seen on Slashdot.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Like2Byte]

Exactly. This is simply inhumane. Regardless of the otrocities commited by the convicted, we cannot, as a society, debase ourselves by resorting to torture of the mind, body, or soul.

The department of corrections is supposed to be "correcting" human behaviour, not damaging it. Too much of that happens in prisons as it is. Now this doctor wants to exacerbate that?

Whatever organization that she received her doctorate from should revoke it immediately!

Re:Ridiculous.

[newcastlejon]

I'm not worried about this actually happening. It'd be shot down by the ECHR and at best would just give the Telegraph another reason to complain about them.

I'm more concerned that someone who calls themself a doctor could even concieve of such a thing; I'm going to have to assume that Ms Roache isn't that kind of doctor, otherwise I'm in danger of losing any lingering faith I have in the innate goodness of Man.

Re:Ridiculous.

[khasim]

And it's a TV show plot.

The Sentence

Re:Ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

On other hand, this could actually be used positively. If someone is sentenced to thirty years, but they only had to spend 10 real years (but 30 with time dilation drug) - then they come out into a society that isn't all that changed, comparatively, and easier for them to readjust back into, having served their time.

There's bad and good with every technological use.

Re: Ridiculous.

[MozeeToby]

1000 years subject time, all spent strapped to a gurney and looking at the ceiling and you think they're going to come out of it as a productive member of society? Not to mention submitting someone to 1000 years of that torture in less time than it takes for a lawyer to file an appeal, that's just a great idea for justice. I sincerely hope the author of this piece was being satirical... the alternative is that she's a raging sociopath.

Re:Ridiculous.

[jeffmeden]

That's ridiculous. If we wanted to cause as much damage to the criminals as possible, why not simply reinstate torture?

That's basically what she seems to want.

(no we shouldn't do that)

Exactly. This article has more "thefuck?" in it than almost any I've seen on Slashdot. And they even missed the lede: the Scifi tie-in is obviously the Star Trek DS9 episode "Hard Time". Duh.

But seriously, life without parole (not a thing in the UK? look into it) is pretty severe, prisons are designed to be brutal (far too effective at punishment and far too ineffective at rehabilitation) so unless we want a whole new section of the penal system designed for "extra" punishment of heinous offenders then we should probably be more concerned with rehabilitating the non-heinous offenders before the prison system swallows the government up.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most objectionable story I've ever seen on Slashdot.

This is what happens when a biblical zeal for vengeance meets modern technology.

Anybody seriously contemplating using something like this should be subjected to it themselves, and is well into the end of the medical ethics of Joseph Mengele.

Even suggesting something this obscene should cause you to lose your medical license.

Re:Ridiculous.

[pjt33]

Her PhD is in philosophy. However, she is an associate editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, so we should all still be pretty worried.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Joce640k]

They didn't get out of anything, they're dead.

Sometimes their victims still have a lot of years left.

Re: Ridiculous.

[gutnor]

Well if you look at the summary, she does not call it justice, she calls it punishment.

Re: Ridiculous.

[jythie]

Yeah, this pretty much gives up completely on the concept of rehabilitation and is steeped in the idea that if you make someone suffer enough they will not commit any more crimes for fear of more.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Applehu Akbar]

In a society that cannot bring itself to punish its worst criminals by execution, people are inevitably going to come up with ideas like this.

The article did raise an interesting point: if there are crimes so severe that only vengeance gets through to the perpetrators' minds in the absence of any hope of 'correction' (the Wichita Massacre or the Knoxville Horror, as US examples), then wouldn't some future technology for "tinkering with the brain" be a more "European" alternative, by their way of thinking, than execution?

Re: Ridiculous.

[evendiagram]

Considering that time dilation punishment would be completely solitary, this may be the most cruel way to psychologically break a person. The author should be the first to volunteer for testing.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Triklyn]

that's incredibly worrying. she seems to have an incredibly despicable and base understanding of what the criminal justice system is fundamentally.

Re: Ridiculous.

[azav]

Certainly seems like short term thinking. The author's focus is on the punishment for the action, nothing about what happens after to the criminal and how this affects society as that person has to re-enter society.

Re:Ridiculous.

[bluefoxlucid]

I say we bring back beatings.

We currently take petty criminals in poor neighborhoods, put them in jail for 60 days, they get out, 2 months behind on rent, fired from their job for not coming to work for 8 weeks, incapable of feeding their kids, and they wind up homeless. Now what? Best course of action is to become a drug dealer.

You stole a candy bar. Caning, 10 lashes. Then you go home.

Re:Ridiculous.

[newcastlejon]

However, she is an associate editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics,

But hopefully not for too much longer.

Re: Ridiculous.

[cheesybagel]

This idea is hogwash. They used to conduct lobotomies on prisoners at once point. If the purpose behind limited sentences is to rehabilitate a prisoner you cannot do that by turning them into vegetables or hardened criminals which is what this person is proposing would do. Her '1000 year' sentence, assuming it had no other side effects which I seriously doubt, would either turn these people into raging lunatics or they would get so disconnected from real life that they would probably start dispensing their own vengeance once they came out of jail.

If she killed her kid when she was 27 years old and gets 30 years jail she will come out of jail with 57 years and most likely cannot have a kid again. Which means she cannot even do the exact same crime again at all. No need to do stupid shit.

Re:Ridiculous.

[khasim]

And worry that she (a philosophy PhD) cannot tell the difference between "justice" and "vengeance".

I had wondered whether the best way to achieve justice in cases like that was to prolong death as long as possible.

Seriously. She cannot tell the difference between "justice" and "vengeance".

Some crimes are so bad they require a really long period of punishment, and a lot of people seem to get out of that punishment by dying.

And it gets worse.

In the US, for instance, the vast majority of people on death row appeal to have their sentences reduced to life imprisonment. That suggests that a quick stint in prison followed by death is seen as a worse fate than a long prison sentence.

Or rather it suggests that being DEAD means that you have no chance of parole or pardon or of the system finally deciding that you really are innocent.

A lot of philosophers who have written about personal identity wonder whether identity can be sustained over an extremely long lifespan. Even if your body makes it to 1,000 years, the thinking goes, that body is actually inhabited by a succession of persons over time rather than a single continuous person.

No it is not a "succession of persons". It is one person with a succession of experiences. Those experiences can change that person's world view but it is still the same person.

And that means you are effectively punishing one person for a crime committed by someone else. Most of us would think that unjust.

The same can be said about a prisoner's first time in prison. But just because someone's world view changes does not mean that that person is now someone else.

Suppose there was some physics experiment that stood a decent chance of generating a black hole that could destroy the planet and all future generations. If someone deliberately set up an experiment like that, I could see that being the kind of supercrime that would justify an eternal sentence.

Physicists in prison.

Re:Ridiculous.

[newcastlejon]

Also an episode on Trek. "Hard Time" was the title I think; it was one of the many episodes where O'Brien was the whipping boy.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Chatsubo]

While I agree this person seems... misguided, I do see a point in this.

Currently we "rehabilitate" people by putting them in a cage with a whole bunch of other sociopaths for decades and expect them to emerge as productive members of society. In doing so, we already are cruel by removing a substantial part of their lives from them (and probably get them raped, psychologically and physically abused, etc). They can never get that time back, no matter how productive they emerge, no matter how sorry they are, no matter that they'll never do it again, or that they've already been punished by being completely removed from normal society for an extended period of time. That life "time" is gone forever.

I'd actually be behind a concept similar to this GIVEN that the drugs don't put them in a state of agony, paranoia, hallucination, etc. (you know, stuff normally associated with the drugs she's talking about). Or in the case of a virtual world: If the person could live in some kind of prison-like world, still study, interact with others (hopefully non-sociopaths), etc....

Basically serve out their sentence without losing that much of their actual life. Then maybe this is a more humane thing to do. It certainly helps in the case where someone receives "8 life sentences", to make that sentence more severe than just one. My only concern: Could you really rehabilitate someone who has done something so bad as to receive a punishment that harsh? A THOUSAND years?! Isn't part of the point to remove lost causes like that from society? What you're essentially doing in that case is shortening the time-frame that we are all safe from these people.

Re: Ridiculous.

[i kan reed]

Why do we "punish" criminals, anyways? Is society some sort of arbiter of karma?

Deter? Yes.
Rehabilitate? Yes.
Keep off the street? Yes.
Punish? I don't get it.

Re: Ridiculous.

[HideyoshiJP]

I'm guessing she finally got around to watching some Deep Space Nine.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, this article is from a UK newspaper and is about someone at Oxford pondering the UK system of punishment. How does America even tie in?

Re: Ridiculous.

[L4t3r4lu5]

We have no way of knowing, for certain, that this is indeed how you feel. We therefore segregate you from society, and in fact other criminals for your own protection due to the nature of your crime, and observe your behaviour. You are assessed by qualified professionals in a controlled environment until they are sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that you are indeed rehabilitated and unlikely to re-offend.

Re: Ridiculous.

[WilyCoder]

You're saying that because you believe the accuracy of convictions is 100%. That's laughable.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Ol Olsoc]

And yet death row is filled with people desperate to exchange their impending deaths for life imprisonent.

Because there is a difference between criminals and non criminals. IIn addition, there is a whole spectrum in between.

For myself, I would prefer death to being in prison at all, for any length of time. For others, prison is just another place to live.

We're always trying to impose our own values upon others.

But to the subject at hand - The good doctor is pretty evil. Why not just beat them within an inch of their lives, then using the best medicine available, revive them in order to repeat the beatings tomorrow?

The answer is this - when the actions of the righteous are indistinguishable from the actions of the evil, the righteous and the evil are one and the same.

Re: Ridiculous.

[kilfarsnar]

Currently we "rehabilitate" people by putting them in a cage with a whole bunch of other sociopaths for decades and expect them to emerge as productive members of society. In doing so, we already are cruel by removing a substantial part of their lives from them (and probably get them raped, psychologically and physically abused, etc). They can never get that time back, no matter how productive they emerge, no matter how sorry they are, no matter that they'll never do it again, or that they've already been punished by being completely removed from normal society for an extended period of time. That life "time" is gone forever.

US prison is not meant to rehabilitate. That's a fantasy that some still hold, but prison is there to punish you, nothing more. Well, it's supposed to deter you as well, but I'm not sure how well that works.

The Prison Reform Act of 1984 states "imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation." And yet, as you refer to, we expect people to come out of prison and rejoin polite society. Well, we say we expect that, but then we put up all kinds of obstacles to becoming gainfully employed as an ex-con. If you're black, you're basically unemployable after being in prison. So we lock people up in a terrible place, expect them to somehow improve themselves while there, make it hard for them to rebuild their lives once they get out, and then wonder why those people can't get their shit together. Must be something about their "culture", eh? It's one of the more fucked up aspects of our criminal justice system (right next to for-profit prisons). Really, it's absurd on an existentialist level.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Primate Pete]

Happily, "Dr." Roache isn't an MD, she's a philosophy professor and apparently unaware of the Hippocratic Oath. That gives her substantially reduced capacity to do harm compared to someone in actual medical practice working with actual human beings.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Sloppy]

Tests have already been done on countless millions of people. None of them complained about being dead, said they'd rather be doing something else, or petitioned to be made no-longer dead. Zero.

Our common sense (and some very strong instincts) tell us it's an extremely bad thing, but thousands of years of observations suggest that once it happens, nobody really cares anymore.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a pretty simple concept. Cue the "Davy Jones" character from Pirates of the Caribbean. You'll have to trust me - I can do the voice well... He says, "Are you afraid of death?". (Note, you might be afraid of suffering / pain / disability - those are different things sometimes associated times near death, but are not, in and of themselves, what we are talking about. So think about it - what scares you? 30 years in prison? Death? What scares me is the prison. Death? Not so much. Why would I be afraid of ceasing to exist? Either rational people are right and we are done and gone, or the theists are right and we go to our reward. Either way, not much to fear there. The thing to fear is a long incarceration.

Re: Ridiculous.

[oji-sama]

And if they were thinking about the consequences when they committed the crime in the first place... would they have?

And well... There's the problem. They were not thinking about the consequences. And harsher punishments don't make a difference. Punishment is a deterrent, but not one that scales well, if at all...

Re: Ridiculous.

[stabiesoft]

I've often wondered about drastically modifying the prison system. Some offences, such as the recent sxsw killings would get the death penalty immediately, as there is no question as to who did it and definitely not an accident. Under those conditions (murder+in the act), death penalty is punishment. For other serious crimes, (armed robbery, kidnapping, or murder and we did not catch you in the act) you get a trial, and if convicted, you go to rehab. And I mean a concerted effort at rehab. After rehab, you have one demerit. You get out, help is given to get a job, like halfway houses etc. Again, real help. You get caught again, trial etc, rehab, demerit number 2. Get caught again, trial, convicted, no more rehab. Death penalty. This system provides real effort to make you a member of society, and allows for mistakes in the trial system. And if you really don't want to be part of society, society does what most pack animal societies do, eliminate members that can't play nice.

Re: Ridiculous.

[sFurbo]

the idea that if you make someone suffer enough they will not commit any more crimes for fear of more.

I think you give the author too much credit. As I read it, it is steeped in pure lust for vengeance, no rational thought required.

Re: Ridiculous.

[coinreturn]

Tests have already been done on countless millions of people. None of them complained about being dead, said they'd rather be doing something else, or petitioned to be made no-longer dead. Zero.

Our common sense (and some very strong instincts) tell us it's an extremely bad thing, but thousands of years of observations suggest that once it happens, nobody really cares anymore.

You've just been ignoring their complaints. They're screaming in pain in various haunted houses.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Applehu Akbar]

Those cases of execution of the innocent, which are extremely rare, boil down to use of old-fashioned forensics and murder-by-overzealous-prosecutor. Officials who would intentionally frame a suspect need to be subject to execution themselves. Today's improved forensics, especially analysis of DNA, are leading to a lot more new convictions than exonerations.

Re: Ridiculous.

[DarkOx]

Exactly! Most death row inmates do just about anything they can to get that sentence commuted to life or anything less than death. Sure some do march stoically to the lethal injection table but its hardly the norm.

Re: Ridiculous.

[MozeeToby]

Many countries with what I could consider "pure" rehabilitation programs spend a fraction what the US does on incarceration and have lower recidivism rates. These systems are generally run on the basic philosophy that criminal behavior that can't be fixed is a mental illness and should be treated as such, often meaning they are in fact removed from society longer than they would have been if they had simply thrown in prison. Everyone else goes through counseling, education, etc during their prison sentence. And again, at a lower cost and lower recidivism rate than we see with our punishment centered systems.

Re: Ridiculous.

[allo]

the problem is the lethal injection. There are ways to kill someone without any pain (see assisted suicide), but the death penalty is executed with some very painful medicine. Why?

Re: Ridiculous.

[hawkinspeter]

I would have thought that the Archangel Michael would be more accepting of rehabilitation and redemption.

Re: Ridiculous.

[i kan reed]

No I don't. I think that's another and big problem, but not even the main one here.

And from that, I extrapolate that you don't actually know what I was saying. And rather than be a jerk about it, I'll try rephrasing.

Looking ahead and seeing consequences of actions is one of the most defining characteristics between future successful children and unsuccessful children, and one can extrapolate that(perhaps too far) to suggest that maybe people who commit crimes don't really have that mindset when they do. To claim more punishment is more deterrence only makes sense when you're trying to combat incentive.

Preposition #1: No rational chain of logic can lead someone to committing any of the crimes that currently have the death penalty in face of even relatively minor punishments(like say 10 years in jail)
Preposition #2: Some people are quite irrational
Preposition #3: Murder or rape in general are definitely signs of irrationality.
Preposition #4: Deterrence by death penalty intends people to rationally reconsider their premeditated crimes
Conclusion: The people who commit felonies that might have the death penalty aren't going to be swayed by increased measures for detterence.

That was the argument I was implicitly trying to make.

Re: Ridiculous.

[i kan reed]

Yes, that was the point I was trying to make, thank you.

And I make one very specific exception to this rule, one that matters. When someone has something big to gain by doing something horrible, they may need harsher punishments to balance a rational risk/reward equation in their head.

If the choice is: risk a year in jail to get a couple million dollars from insider trading
Then it's possible that some people will choose that risk.
And in that kind of case, more deterrence could be a good thing.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Sentrion]

The only problem with a 1,000 sentence condensed into 10 years is that a prisoner rights group will argue that the prisoners will need more than their one-hour of outside recreation time. A lawyer could probably convince a judge sooner or later that in the first 30 years of his "sentence" that the prisoner was very well behaved and should be released on parole, even if in real time he served only three months.

I would also be concerned about prisoners developing a dependency on this type of drug.

Which raises another question: why couldn't this drug be put to use so that I can enjoy a three week vacation at the end of my typical real-time work day?

How productive would a prisoner be on such a drug? Would they be able to benefit from counseling, group therapy, prison ministries, community service projects, job training, prison jobs, etc. or would the prisoners be stuck in a coma-like stasis? I'd rather have a prison population that was either very busy working on rehabilitation efforts, or for those serving life or on death-row, those prisoners should be given an opportunity to contribute to their own support, such as working in the prison kitchen, laundry, etc.

I've seen how much the bill is for a civilian to spend one week in an ICU. I think the prison system is expensive enough as it is.

Re: Ridiculous.

[MrL0G1C]

Don't bring race into this.

Why not, the justice system and society certainly do, going by the numbers.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Barandis]

See Table 6: Ex-Offenders and the Labor Market

At least according to one study, race is a big part of it. It's not the only part - level of education appears to have as big an effect - but it's clear that a black felon is much less employable than a white felon.

Re: Ridiculous.

[stoploss]

the problem is the lethal injection. There are ways to kill someone without any pain (see assisted suicide), but the death penalty is executed with some very painful medicine. Why?

I recently did the research about this very question. I won't provide the many links I found, because all were trivially available on google.

1. An Oklahoma medical examiner came up with the three drug cocktail. He has no pharmacology background (btw, this is foreshadowing for what comes next).

2. A multi-drug cocktail was chosen in order to avoid comparison with animal euthanasia.

3. Ironically, the three drug cocktail would be considered unethical to use on animals. They use a reliable, long lasting barbiturate overdose (e.g. phenobarbital).

4. When asked "why these three drugs?", the protocol inventor's response was "Why not?"

5. "Why not"s include drug incompatibility that causes drugs to precipitate out of solution if saline flushes aren't used between drugs, the fact that some of these drugs ship in solid form and have to be turned into a solution by prison staff or a compounding pharmacy, and that the barbiturate used (pentothal) is extremely *short* acting.

6. The current alternative protocol that uses midazolam is far superior. It's a surgical anesthetic that causes anterograde amnesia. The other drug is hydromorphone (aka. Dilaudid). If it gives you any sense of what that is, ERs constantly have drug seekers coming in and faking injuries or kidney stones to try to get hydromorphone. The gasping the one executed guy had was likely due to the fact that his brainstem was dying. Basically, this protocol is like a junkie OD with tranqs. The three drug cocktail doesn't have gasping because drug #2 is pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the lungs.

7. No one will advocate improving the protocol because of the retarded politics that surround capital punishment. The anti death penalty camp will latch onto any suggestions of improvement as "proof" lethal injection is inhumane. The pro camp won't give them that opportunity, so we're stuck with a fucking achingly stupid drug cocktail invented by someone who was the equivalent of a stereotypical Slashdotter who suggests "improvements" for the Mars Rover. Why not just inject these prisoners with phenobarbital? Works great for animals. Peaceful death... but ZOMG! can't use the *animal* protocol on *humans*!

Re: Ridiculous.

[Mr. Slippery]

No rational chain of logic can lead someone to committing any of the crimes that currently have the death penalty in face of even relatively minor punishments(like say 10 years in jail)

Of course it can. "I believe I have a 90% chance of succeeding in this crime, i.e., of not being convicted for it. If I succeed, I receive benefit (money, the elimination of an annoying person, whatever) which I value at A, a positive number. I have a 10% change of failing, i.e. being convicted, and receiving sentence B, which I value at a negative number. My expected outcome is .9A + .1 B. In this case that sum is greater than 0. Logically, I should commit the crime."

It all depends on how one values A and B, and what probability one estimates for success.

Now, I'll certainly concur that most people committing such crimes are not engaging in such rational analysis; they are acting from poor impulse control. But the proposition that no rational chain of logic can lead to committing such crimes? I don't think that stands.

Re: Ridiculous.

[KingOfBLASH]

Currently I'm traveling around SE Asia. Just about every country you go to has capital punishment for anyone trafficking in drugs. Yup, bring anything into singapore and they'll hang you by the neck until dead. Of course waiting would be cruel, they'll do it quite promptly the following friday.

(Citation? Of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...)

The funny thing is, even though you would think most people would want to avoid the long drop I am quite often asked if I want to buy drugs.

This to me really shows that people just are not rational enough to avoid crime no matter how harsh the punishment we mete out. Because of this, really I think the best option is to focus in on rehabilitation, and in extreme cases locking people away to protect society, because the fact of the matter is that punishment as a deterrent does not work.

Re:Ridiculous.

[geminidomino]

Same bible, different chapters. The OT is full of psycho garbage like this.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Kingofearth]

Spend a week in solitary confinement and then tell us it isn't torture.

Re:Ridiculous.

[orangesquid]

One advantage of having closure is that it greatly reduces the challenges the victim faces going forward.

Some of those reductions in challenges are warranted. Some of those reductions are not.

We, as a society, endorse the concept of innocent victimization: if someone is made to suffer at the hands of another, the sufferer ought not have any further social obligation. For the most part, that's fair.

However, life can never be made completely fair, and I argue it should not be. If such were the case, we would not require any higher level of mental functioning than simple seeking and avoidance behaviors. There would be no point to sophisticated problem-solving, as there would be no complex problems that needed solving. Natural selection seems to favor some species developing higher skills of reasoning, which could indicate that this is an expected consequence of our form of life in our environment. Genetics also provides little incentive to reduce gradual increases in complexity that aren't strictly necessary; indeed, one of the resultant characteristics of this is diversity of life, which as a whole seems to promote the continuance of life in general in an ever-changing environment.

I cannot pretend to empathize with most of the suffering in the world, particularly the more severe forms, but I can say that personally, most of the suffering I have experienced has been challenges providing opportunities for personal growth. I did not always see things this way. I do not want this to read as an endorsement of mild forms of suffering, but merely as a reason to not try to eliminate completely nor balance absolutely the unfairness inherent in the human condition.

There is something to be said for the psychological benefit of having some degree of closure. I do not believe lawmakers should try to enforce the maximum possible closure. I favor the idea of rehabilitation of criminals; in the cases where re-entry to society would be irreducably dangerous, such as strong cases of sociopathy or impaired functioning resulting from traumatic brain injury or genetic predisposition, I would tend to favor restrictions of mobility and physical functioning only as necessary to prevent most of the possible social damage. These restrictions would, to the extent possible, scale inversely with the level to which a criminal seeks to maximize their benefit to society.

Note that, by rehabilitation, I do not wish to imply sudden and unsupervised social re-entry. Rehabilitation is a tricky game that human culture has only begun to play with a modest level of success.

In other words, closure oughtn't be absolute, rehabilitation should be sought when possible, and where it is not possible, an individual's pursuit to integrate with society should influence the degree of their confinement.

Of course, this could all be a crock of shit. I haven't done any deep research into the statistics of recidivism to support my point of view.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Jane Q. Public]

"Tests have already been done on countless millions of people. None of them complained about being dead, said they'd rather be doing something else, or petitioned to be made no-longer dead. Zero."

That's really beside the point. The big problem here is that Dr. Roache seems to think that the primary purpose of incarceration is to "punish" people. Nonsense.

While punishment as an incentive to prevent re-offense might have some value, statistics and what we know of psychology say that really doesn't work very well.

Society's main interest, when it comes to incarcerating physically dangerous people, is to lock them up so that they don't continue to cause societal damage (rape, injury, murder, etc.). From a societal standpoint, "punishment" is (and should be) far from the first consideration. It just isn't that important.

For more minor offenders, punishment might be more of a consideration. But at the same time, torturing minor offenders probably isn't a good idea.

Which leaves us with: harsh punishment just isn't that important. Keeping them away from society is.

Re: Ridiculous.

[OneAhead]

That's not the full story; there's also a very important component of deterring other people from doing the same thing. Then again, we know from psychology (as well as history and comparison between countries) that the deterrent effect of harsher punishments quickly levels off beyond a certain point, so this only supports your conclusion that "harsh punishment just isn't that important".

Re: Ridiculous.

[k8to]

To expand here. I've been mugged. The kids who did it certainly need help, and that help can't just be someone giving them some money or other soft response, but longterm incarceration won't do anyone any favors. It won't help them, it won't help me, it won't help our criminal system costs, and it won't make the neighborhood safer.

What they need is a system that requires them to accept responsibility for their actions and to make restitutions for them so they don't feel guilty for life. That's called restorative justice.

Re: Ridiculous.

[SJester]

What about deterrence? The guy who regularly robs cars in this neighborhood continues to do so even after multiple arrests. This is because the punishment is not severe enough to discourage him from pursuing his career. But if he were instead threatened with a mind-bending acid trip to hell, perhaps he'd find something else to do. Or he might like the trip. I don't know, he's kind of nuts.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Jane Q. Public]

"This is because the punishment is not severe enough to discourage him from pursuing his career."

No, it isn't. We have a century of solid research, evidence and data to say so. Punishment just isn't a very good deterrent.

I didn't say it's NOT a deterrent. And I didn't say we shouldn't punish. But it's not a very good deterrent of re-offense. We know this.

On the other hand, as somebody pointed out above: it might be a good deterrent against someone else committing the same crime. So there's that.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Dr_Barnowl]

An ex-politician did the research for a BBC documentary - there is a simple, easy method of execution, used to humanely kill pigs in abattoirs, it's cheap, quick and requires no exotic chemicals. Asphyxia with nitrogen.

He asked several people involved in administering the death penalty if they would consider it, and to a man, they all refused to condone the notion. Because the victim feels a few moments of euphoria before they go.

They *want* the pain and suffering, despite the prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" in the Constitution. The protocols are explicitly designed to be inhumane, and there is a tacit agreement amongst all those involved that they should stay that way.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Rich0]

Personally, I do believe in rehabilitation, but only for minor offenses, where someone goes "astray". As for things like rape, robbery and murder ... not so much.

Why?

And the problem is that there are always matters of degree. Walking into a mall and shooting 20 people is a different crime than killing somebody with your hands after they invaded your home and grappled and tried to strangle you. Shoplifting is a different crime than holding somebody up at gunpoint. Grabbing a woman off the street and raping her is a different crime than sleeping with your girlfriend without getting a signed consent form.

I think that rehabilitation MUST be a higher priority because doing anything else endangers the public unless the criminal is locked away for life. What good is sending somebody to prison for 10 years if they rape somebody else after they get out? Better to spend 3 years, or 30 years, rehabilitating them so that when they do get out the public is safe.

Re: Ridiculous.

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Get caught again, trial, convicted, no more rehab. Death penalty. This system provides real effort to make you a member of society, and allows for mistakes in the trial system.

Well, one mistake in the trial system per person, anyway -- and as long as the mistake was in your first trial and not your second. Otherwise, your "mistake in the trial system" commits you to death.

Oh, and can you imagine the blackmail potential against people with "one strike"? What if that strike was due to a mistake in the trial system? Should that relegate you to walking around on pins and needles, looking over your shoulder the rest of your life?

I'm not against the death penalty at all, and I don't disagree that due process rights are abused as the system stands, but this is the opposite extreme IMO -- way too little due process to count on staying alive very long. Particularly if someone in the system has an axe to grind with you.

Re: Ridiculous.

[Macgrrl]

I thought it was a commonly believed position that the reason penalties make for bad deterrents is that most crimes are committed either on the spur of the moment or by people who don't believe they will get caught. Either way - they don't expect the penalty to apply to them.

If you look at the stats for how many homicides go unsolved, it's really scary that one of the crimes with the biggest social taboos and possibly one of the highest penalties, goes unpunished so often.

Re: Ridiculous.

[dywolf]

in our country...maybe. but our prisons are also fairly permissive compared to others around the world. we allow free association of inmates in large groups. we have drug and gang kingpins stil running their collectives from within the prisons, etc. and we decided that we like the idea of giving them a chance to rehabilititate, so we allow inmate populations several concessions that a society focused strictly on punishment would never allow.

now personally, i think if someone has committed an offense worthy of jail time the battle is already half lost (education/prevention/rootcause-elimination being the ideal way to reduce crime). but that said, i also think our prison system is schizophrenic. we lock people away from society for a set time, make some half-arsed attempts to change them, and then when the magic number is up, let em loose again.

it's as if we're attempting to implment a two-pronged strategy within a single system.
i think it should be split into a two-tiered system, one focused on rehabilitation, and one focused on simple incarceration/locking away incurables away from general society. (possibly permanently. say on an island somewhere. though if one of the prisoner's looks like ray liotta, i recommend not sending him there.)

Re: Ridiculous.

[hellop2]

Pardon me, but I must return the bullshit back apon you, Sir. What if you have no alarm clock and miss your 6AM appointment? Then what are you to do, starve?

How about we just use a different example?: "Sleeping in the park (or your car)." Around here that's punishable by 30 days in jail. And puts you ar risk for missing court and further incarceration. If you've previously missed court for any reason, you're considered a flight risk and might be held in jail for several months awaiting trial, whereby you will likely lose your car and/or all worldly possessions. When finally released, are you then less likely to sleep in the park, after having been "effectively punished"? (By "effectively" I mean "achieved some benefit for society." And it's in quotes to imply that the term questionable.)

The OP suggests that many people being punished in jail did not want to break the law but had no viable alternative at the time, other than perhaps starving or being divested of what little assets they may have had. His point was that, in such cases, punishment does not serve society.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we agree with your point, you've not refuted the OP's statement that there are many other lesser crimes where punishment does not serve society.

IMHO, we citizens must petition our Gov't to use modern technology and scientific understanding to implement more useful alternatives to the current system of broadly applied incarceration. Isolation and punishment cannot crime, because they are crimes.

Dude

[JustOK]

Have you ever looked at your handcuffs? I mean, really LOOKED at them?

Thirty years in prison

[Threni]

"Thirty years in prison is currently the most severe punishment available in the UK legal system."

No, it's not. People get 30-year minimum sentences, for instance, and there are a number of prisoners on whole-life sentences:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

More like the movie Demolition Man

[NotDrWho]

Like something out of the movie Inception

I just hope there aren't unintended consequences, as there were in that movie.

Re:More like the movie Demolition Man

[Threni]

> I just hope there aren't unintended consequences, as there were in that movie.

Confusion, tiredness, desire to go to the toilet and not return?

Re:More like the movie Demolition Man

[wonkey_monkey]

desire to go to the toilet

I wanted to, but I couldn't work out how to use the three seashells.

Re:More like the movie Demolition Man

[rahulov]

More like sci-fi mini series: Black Mirror : episode: White bear -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

It will never fly in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to be the very definition of "cruel and unusual".

Prison is more than punishment

[impala]

Imprisoning criminals is trying to do a few things:
* punishment for the criminal
* deterrent for would-be criminals
* protecting the public from re-offence
* rehabilitation of prisoners
Drugs could be used in all these areas?

Re:Prison is more than punishment

[wonkey_monkey]

So could whipping, removal of body parts and branding.

Re:Prison is more than punishment

[Ardyvee]

I don't think a 1000 years punishments would do much to... rehabilitate prisoners. If anything, it'll break them beyond breaking or turn them into madmen that will be your worst enemy on they get out.

The idea of "punishment" for a crime makes little sense beyond a certain point. Sure, you want to punish behaviors as a way to reduce them (the same way we punish kids for behaving incorrectly) but there gets a point where going beyond in the scale of punishment is futile and even counter productive, specially because most of the time all you are doing is giving the satisfaction to the victims that somebody is still being punished (paying for what they did), instead of becoming a better person (which should be the aim of jail time but isn't).

And, on topic: if living for 1000 years for a normal person would usually result in worse than bad results (loss of friends, lack of usual boundaries/inhibitions because you just need to wait), never mind them being locked up (imagine watching the same place and for years at a time, following the same routine over and over again, or in the case of the drug, watching a wall for the equivalent of months at a time)... It'd take a specially strong mind to withstand that and still be functional afterwards. And it's that kind of people that you don't want locked up ever (instead you want them following the law, or for the second option, dead). If you just lock them up, they are going to hate you afterwards for it, if they don't try to escape during sentence.

Re:Prison is more than punishment

[chielk]

I feel that sometimes the most important thing it tries to achieve is to satisfy the victims' or society's desire for revenge.

Re:Prison is more than punishment

[drinkypoo]

The idea of "punishment" for a crime makes little sense beyond a certain point.

Amen to that. Only punishments which are proven to reduce crime should ever be implemented. Even the death penalty has never been shown to do that. People don't think they will get caught, or they feel like they have no choices and their life isn't worth living anyway, so who cares if they might be killed? If murdering people for doing things we don't like isn't an effective punishment, that suggests strongly that many of the lesser punishments are ineffective as well. And if you look at our prison population, you might get the distinct impression that indeed the system is not working in the best interest of The People.

Cruel and unusual punishment

[Chrisq]

IS she looking to abolish the 18th amendment and the universal declaration of human rights

Re:Cruel and unusual punishment

[Tim the Gecko]

The 18th amendment made life seem longer by depriving people of alcohol. It's already been abolished.

What a dimwit

[Jmc23]

Science has proven punishment doesn't work and this person thinks the answer is extended punishment?

This is the problem with specialization and non-communication of important findings from one specialty to another.

Barbaric

[MasseKid]

Justice is not an eye for an eye. Justice is not torture. Justice is not becoming what you seek to destroy.

Re:Barbaric

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Justice is not an eye for an eye. Justice is not torture. Justice is not becoming what you seek to destroy.

Precisely! That's why we need to use Science to enhance our criminals so that justice can be 10, maybe even 100, eyes for an eye without running into pesky human limits!

Why not look forward to virtual hells

[Chrisq]

Iain M Banks takes this to the extreme in Surface Detail. You could have indefinite suffering for almost eternity - as long as your civilisation works on accelerated time.

Not useful

[shellster_dude]

The foremost point of prison is to keep bad individuals where they can't harm the general populace, and to punish them for their actions, with the hope that they will correct their behavior.

Using a time dilation drug does in lieu of actual time served does nothing to help keep them off the street.
Using a time dilation drug as well as a normal sentence amounts to psychological torture or near torture, and won't help with any corrective process which might have prevented repeat offense.

Bottom line: drugs like this have no place in or penal system, regardless of the ethical ramifications of using them on prisoners.

Re:Not useful

[pla]

Bottom line: drugs like this have no place in or penal system, regardless of the ethical ramifications of using them on prisoners.

Our current penal system has no place in our penal system.

What we have now amounts to a mockery of justice-as-rehabilitation, where we give otherwise-good people multi-year "we need to do something" sentences for obvious accidents (involuntary manslaughter, for example, or virtually all victimless "crimes"). They then come out as actual hardened criminals, far more likely to go on to commit real crimes (one well-studied population, nonviolent drug offenders, come out four times more likely to go on to commit a violent crime than the general population).

That said, I have to admit that this woman strikes me as likely a dangerous psychopath herself. Sentencing someone to a thousand years of boredom? "A lot of people seem to get out of that punishment by dying"??? Holy shit, woman, what kind of sick fuck would come up with something like that??? And I say that as someone who supports the death penalty, and personally would rather we use straightforward and effective punishments like caning over merely wasting a decade of someone's life on the taxpayer dime.

But hey, at least you would effectively reduce the cost of prison, since virtually everyone would resort to suicide after their first few "sessions".

Re:Not useful

[CanHasDIY]

Using a time dilation drug does in lieu of actual time served does nothing to help keep them off the street.

On the other hand, using a time dilation drug allows them to serve a 30 year sentence in 3 years (for example), thus allowing them to have a useful post-prison life.

I don't know how it works in the UK, but in America, once you're labeled "convicted felon," your life is pretty much fucked, regardless how much time you spend in prison.

Oh god

[N1AK]

Some crimes are so bad they require a really long period of punishment,

Am I the only the person a little disturbed that we've got scholars focused on the future of punishment coming up with shit like this? We already have ways we could make imprisonment worse, we could torture prisoners incessantly throughout their incarceration but don't because we're trying to show more humanity and restraint than those we lock up... Are they seriously dumb enough to think someone who commits a horrible crime with a 30 year sentence was going to reconsider if they could get an imaginary 60 years or 600 years? Does anyone think that injecting someone with a drug to make them feel like they are somewhere unpleasent for drastically longer is somehow not torture when injecting them with a drug that would cause them pain for a short period of time is?

I expect this kind of primal bollocks to be popular with the population at large but I'd, perhaps naively, thought that people who were informed and trying to put together a rational case would know better.

Re:Oh god

[wonkey_monkey]

Am I the only the person a little disturbed that we've got scholars focused on the future of punishment coming up with shit like this?

Judging by the responses so far, thankfully, no.

What about rehabilitation?

[CastrTroy]

What about rehabilitation? Sure some people do bad things, really bad things. But putting them on drugs to make a sentence seem longer isn't going to make them better members of society when they eventually get out. Solitary confinement also makes things seem longer, but eventually they get out and they go right on doing what they did before, because you didn't fix the underlying problem. If you just want them in jail for as long as possible, and don't strive to rehabilitate them, you might as well invoke the death penalty. The point of the justice system shouldn't be just to punish people, but rehabilitate them so they can be more useful members of society.

We do this already

[unixcorn]

A convicted felon, even once they serve their sentence, is still a pariah in the US. Their record follows them so they can't get jobs, they are shunned by society and in some cases they are put on lists so neighbors can keep their kids away from them. I think we do a pretty good job of torturing criminals for their entire lives, while we wonder why the recidivism rate is so high. As a caveat, I have to say that our "correctional" institutions probably don't do much real correction so the guys on the lists probably need a watchful eye on them.

Something very similar happened in Dredd(2012)

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a drug called SloMo used to do something just like this.

or, we could. ..

[The Grim Reefer]

Perhaps use this type of drug to allow a prisoner to serve their twenty year sentence in considerably less "real time". That way they still serve their time and can get out young enough to attempt to contribute to society. I would think that the threat of a 1000 year sentence would scare the crap out of at least some criminals, though not all.

Doing it wrong...

[flogger]

Use this pill on Friday night and make the weekend seem like it last for 5 years instead of 20 minutes.
Maybe I could give it to my spouse before sex.

Star Trek covered this

[kairu]

While reading this article, I find it hard to believe that "Roache says when she began researching this topic, she was thinking a lot about Daniel Pelka". Not to insult the inspiration, but it seems like a lot of other sci-fi related shows have already covered this. The one that is on the top of my mind is "Star Trek: Deep Space 9" ("Hard Time", Season 2, Episode 25) where Miles O'Brien's mind has been altered to create memories of being incarcerated for 20 years on an alien world on charges of espionage and sedition.

Isn't this basically the same thing (except, you know, for actual criminals)?

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Not always corrections

[Quila]

This is for people whom society has deemed beyond correction. They should never be allowed to reenter society, so we must decide what to do with them. The only logical sentences in this case are life imprisonment without parole, or death.

What the author proposes is just sick.

Prevention and Protection over Punishment

[BrendaEM]

I do not believe in punishment. I feel that punishment is the victim's mantra. I feel that a government's first job is the prevention of crime.

One theory is that harsh punishment will prevent crime, as if some jealous person will consider that when they find their spouse in bed with someone else, or some poor staving person or meth-addicted person will consider that before robbing a store, or after the police still won't do anything about the neighbors they will just think of the punishment before they just let bygones be bygones.

Instead we ask our police officers, our lawyers, our scientists, and intimately, we ask our lawmakers to be our agents for revenge.

Re:Prevention and Protection over Punishment

[Chester_Lyons]

You're saying it wouldn't make a difference to a thief if they knew the punishment for robbing a store was either some community service or 10 years in prison? For those among us who are not guided by morality, punishment is the only reason not to perform acts of theft or senseless violence. And regardless of where you think our governments priorities should be, or however much the government can enact policies to prevent crimes, crimes will still happen, and they must be dealt with appropriately. The criminal system needs to be designed with multiple goals: rehabilitation and reform for criminals who have the potential to become better citizens, and the prevention crime through the deterrence of punishment for those who cannot.

Dr. Rebecca Roache is the psychopath here.

[jasonbrown]

Disgusting new form of torture invented. WAKE UP HUMANITY - We need to focus on the good not another way to hurt each other.

I like the drug...Just not it's intended use.

[DROP TABLE users]

Why would you want to develop a drug to make living peoples life worse. When it could be used to make dying peoples lives better.

Inception?

[Fnord666]

Like something out of the movie Inception...

If you're going to use a movie reference, there's a much better one out there. The movie Dredd revolved around a new drug called 'Slo-Mo', which caused a time dilation effect in users identical to the effect described in the article.

Re:It is common.

[jythie]

Which always makes me rather nervous since it speaks to a significant part of the population that really wants a socially acceptable way to hurt people, and they are one rationalization away from being a threat to everyone around them.

Sad thing is, it is not even theoretical. Quite a bit of assault and murder are justified by the killer using some twisted 'but they were immoral!' justification, with sex workers and the homeless being easy prey.

Why?

[hoggoth]

Why would we do this?

What does anyone gain by making the convict experience 1,000 years of mental torture? It doesn't improve the victim's life. It doesn't stop others from committing crimes. It doesn't do anything productive or helpful. It is just torture for the sake of revenge. It is stupid and sadistic.