Dear People Outside Prisons (Hopefully to Remain So ... ),
As a licensed lawyer in the US (Duke University Law School, 86', admitted in two jurisdictions), a Zen teacher and former volunteer at maximum security prisons in Florida, as violent crimes impacted my own family as victims, and one person in society, I know that we can do better than our present situation. Soon, powerful alternatives will come online ...
My book says ...
~~~~
[W]hat would happen if we began to treat certain especially harmful and destructive human tendencies (such as excess anger, and certain extreme examples of unrestrained desires leading to deadly violence, rape, child abuse, out of control drug addictions and the like) as medical issues, diseases, to be approached and treated not unlike how we seek to control or cure excess cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and cancers? Are they not societal cancers?
Hopefully in the (very near) future, we can begin with certain ‘low hanging fruit,’ social scourges almost universally agreed upon by people far and wide as ripe for elimination by almost any means possible, including by medical interventions to the body and brain if needed for a cure. These include violent crime, especially murder and assault in anger, rape and child abuse at the top, as well as debilitating drug and alcohol addictions ...
...
... Imagine, for example, what our current world would be like with just murder in anger, pedophilia and destructive addictions greatly reduced or eliminated: Some serious problems would remain, but this would be a much better world.
What Buddhist would not support ending the scourges of child abuse, addiction, rape and murder as anything but in keeping with our Precepts and Vow to save all Sentient Beings? Is not inaction in the face of viable methods to help people simply abetting their suffering?
... We may be on the very brink, right now, of being able to eliminate most child abuse, rape and other violent crimes, as well as the need for imprisonment. Imagine a world in which a simple device implanted deeply and securely under the skin of persons, previously convicted in a court of law of child sexual abuse, eliminated the vast majority of repeat offenses. Sexual desire and attraction to children might be neutralized. In those prone to violence in anger, the arising of anger could be counterbalanced, kind feelings stimulated. Sometime not too far from today, using technology readily available even now, implants with micro-computers could be stapled deep into the body which, when detecting hormone releases in the bloodstream associated with extreme anger in an individual with a history of violent crime, or sexual urges in a person found to have tendencies toward child abuse, would stimulate electrical firings in the brain or nervous system, or inject pharmaceuticals into the bloodstream, to cancel the angry emotion or sexual urges. The result? Children would be safe.
Imagine a world in which persons convicted of certain violent acts, ranging from heinous assault to rape to torture to murder in anger, became ultimately incapable of extreme anger and physically ill at the very thought of doing harm to a fellow sentient being. Just this change alone would return us to a world where we could walk through our city streets without fear at night, and our children would be safe to go to school or play in the park. Somewhere further down the road, nano-bots could become available which, when injected into the bloodstream, attach themselves to neuron clusters of the brain and, upon detecting certain patterns of electrical firings associated with violent reaction, extreme anger or sexual arousal, would emit their own counter-firings to weaken or redirect the target pattern.
We already use some methods of bodily alteration today to much more limited degrees, such as in those cases where rapists and child molesters are offered so-called “chemical castration” or other drug therapies. However, current methods of chemical castration are crude, often cruel and/or ineffective. Upcoming medical treatments for violent criminal behavior need not be so rough.
It is imperative that judges and juries continue to supervise and act as a legal check on procedures: Today, punishments including long terms of imprisonment, and treatments for rape such as chemical castration, are handed out only after trial by judge and a jury of one’s peers. Likewise in future cases, only after trial before a just court in which guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, would an electrode or chemical releasing device be implanted deep under the skin of the violent individual, activating only when detecting release of anger associated hormones or the firing of sections of the brain associated with violence. The device would then trigger an electric stimulus to the brain, or release counteracting chemicals into the bloodstream, which would immediately neutralize the person’s extreme anger or drives. Of course, such measures might then be combined with standard counseling and psychiatric therapy to further help the individual.
Is it worth our doing so? What if, through these means, tens of thousands or more cases of rape, torture, child abuse and other crimes of violence were prevented, lives of victims saved from injury or death? Is there anything unethical about employing devices to detect and counter sexual feelings in the brains of known and convicted pedophiles? Countless innocent children will be spared from horrors, horribly crippled lifetimes, and the molester would even be spared, becoming instead a gainful member of society. Standards under our criminal justice system for conviction would not change in such regard, but the punishment (unlike what we presently have available) would be medical treatment and effective cure instead.
Possibly, we even would not need to keep violent offenders in jails for more than a few days, removed from civil society and their fellow humanity, because the risk of criminal recidivism would be so low. Then, out in the free world, a duty to work productively to compensate victims for one’s acts, to do public service for good, to show contrition, and to prove that one can live peacefully, would be substituted for incarceration. Society would be spared from the crimes by repeat offenders, the criminal would become a free and socially contributing individual, and our prisons could be torn down or put to better uses as hospitals, schools and monasteries.
Jizo, the Great Bodhisattva who protects suffering children, who visits and seeks to change the hearts of those confined to hells and earthly prisons, thus empties the prisons and saves the suffering kids. Would these “Jizo Devices” not be doing the work of the Bodhisattva to save suffering sentient beings?
(to be continued)
Gassho, J
stlah
As a licensed lawyer in the US (Duke University Law School, 86', admitted in two jurisdictions), a Zen teacher and former volunteer at maximum security prisons in Florida, as violent crimes impacted my own family as victims, and one person in society, I know that we can do better than our present situation. Soon, powerful alternatives will come online ...
My book says ...
~~~~
[W]hat would happen if we began to treat certain especially harmful and destructive human tendencies (such as excess anger, and certain extreme examples of unrestrained desires leading to deadly violence, rape, child abuse, out of control drug addictions and the like) as medical issues, diseases, to be approached and treated not unlike how we seek to control or cure excess cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and cancers? Are they not societal cancers?
Hopefully in the (very near) future, we can begin with certain ‘low hanging fruit,’ social scourges almost universally agreed upon by people far and wide as ripe for elimination by almost any means possible, including by medical interventions to the body and brain if needed for a cure. These include violent crime, especially murder and assault in anger, rape and child abuse at the top, as well as debilitating drug and alcohol addictions ...
...
... Imagine, for example, what our current world would be like with just murder in anger, pedophilia and destructive addictions greatly reduced or eliminated: Some serious problems would remain, but this would be a much better world.
What Buddhist would not support ending the scourges of child abuse, addiction, rape and murder as anything but in keeping with our Precepts and Vow to save all Sentient Beings? Is not inaction in the face of viable methods to help people simply abetting their suffering?
... We may be on the very brink, right now, of being able to eliminate most child abuse, rape and other violent crimes, as well as the need for imprisonment. Imagine a world in which a simple device implanted deeply and securely under the skin of persons, previously convicted in a court of law of child sexual abuse, eliminated the vast majority of repeat offenses. Sexual desire and attraction to children might be neutralized. In those prone to violence in anger, the arising of anger could be counterbalanced, kind feelings stimulated. Sometime not too far from today, using technology readily available even now, implants with micro-computers could be stapled deep into the body which, when detecting hormone releases in the bloodstream associated with extreme anger in an individual with a history of violent crime, or sexual urges in a person found to have tendencies toward child abuse, would stimulate electrical firings in the brain or nervous system, or inject pharmaceuticals into the bloodstream, to cancel the angry emotion or sexual urges. The result? Children would be safe.
Imagine a world in which persons convicted of certain violent acts, ranging from heinous assault to rape to torture to murder in anger, became ultimately incapable of extreme anger and physically ill at the very thought of doing harm to a fellow sentient being. Just this change alone would return us to a world where we could walk through our city streets without fear at night, and our children would be safe to go to school or play in the park. Somewhere further down the road, nano-bots could become available which, when injected into the bloodstream, attach themselves to neuron clusters of the brain and, upon detecting certain patterns of electrical firings associated with violent reaction, extreme anger or sexual arousal, would emit their own counter-firings to weaken or redirect the target pattern.
We already use some methods of bodily alteration today to much more limited degrees, such as in those cases where rapists and child molesters are offered so-called “chemical castration” or other drug therapies. However, current methods of chemical castration are crude, often cruel and/or ineffective. Upcoming medical treatments for violent criminal behavior need not be so rough.
It is imperative that judges and juries continue to supervise and act as a legal check on procedures: Today, punishments including long terms of imprisonment, and treatments for rape such as chemical castration, are handed out only after trial by judge and a jury of one’s peers. Likewise in future cases, only after trial before a just court in which guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, would an electrode or chemical releasing device be implanted deep under the skin of the violent individual, activating only when detecting release of anger associated hormones or the firing of sections of the brain associated with violence. The device would then trigger an electric stimulus to the brain, or release counteracting chemicals into the bloodstream, which would immediately neutralize the person’s extreme anger or drives. Of course, such measures might then be combined with standard counseling and psychiatric therapy to further help the individual.
Is it worth our doing so? What if, through these means, tens of thousands or more cases of rape, torture, child abuse and other crimes of violence were prevented, lives of victims saved from injury or death? Is there anything unethical about employing devices to detect and counter sexual feelings in the brains of known and convicted pedophiles? Countless innocent children will be spared from horrors, horribly crippled lifetimes, and the molester would even be spared, becoming instead a gainful member of society. Standards under our criminal justice system for conviction would not change in such regard, but the punishment (unlike what we presently have available) would be medical treatment and effective cure instead.
Possibly, we even would not need to keep violent offenders in jails for more than a few days, removed from civil society and their fellow humanity, because the risk of criminal recidivism would be so low. Then, out in the free world, a duty to work productively to compensate victims for one’s acts, to do public service for good, to show contrition, and to prove that one can live peacefully, would be substituted for incarceration. Society would be spared from the crimes by repeat offenders, the criminal would become a free and socially contributing individual, and our prisons could be torn down or put to better uses as hospitals, schools and monasteries.
Jizo, the Great Bodhisattva who protects suffering children, who visits and seeks to change the hearts of those confined to hells and earthly prisons, thus empties the prisons and saves the suffering kids. Would these “Jizo Devices” not be doing the work of the Bodhisattva to save suffering sentient beings?
(to be continued)
Gassho, J
stlah
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