FILM / Theories of Crime According to Minority Report / Nadia Benjelloun
Image © 20th Century Fox | DreamWorks Pictures
Time and time again, history has shown that mankind has a propensity to be attracted to violent means. Prehistoric warfare between hunters and gatherers, gladiators, protests, and sports fans’ victory rampages are just samples. But this claim alone would hint to a deterministic point of view on humanity. An interpretation that considers this point of view, in both its merits and limitations, is the movie, Minority Report (2002).
The sci-fi thriller, starring Tom Cruise, takes on a positivistic approach to a hypothetical, future context of crime. This being a future where crime can be predicted and stopped ahead of time. In the movie, they rely on psychic technology that consists of human subjects called the precogs. Simply put, the precogs have visions of murders, and the police collect that data to track down convicts and arrest them before they commit the crime. From here, stems the first paradox.
An algorithm that enables foresight would erase a reality where the crime took place, rendering the vision null, in which case, the precogs wouldn’t be granted the vision, or prevision as they referred to it in the movie, in the first place. Like the character Danny Witwer said, “It’s not the future if you stop it.” This was addressed by chief John Anderton when he rolled one of the red balls to demonstrate that Witwer was inclined to catch it when it reached the edge of the table. Anderton questions him as to why he chose to catch it, to which Witwer answered because he knew it was going to fall if he hadn’t. In response, Anderton says, “But it didn’t fall. The fact that you prevented it from happening, doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.” This brief thought experiment highlights a pre-Socratic, metaphysical, philosophy on the nature of the world. The world of reality versus the world of appearance are contradictions. In other words, things we know to be true despite common sense. For instance, we know the earth to be travelling at thousands of miles per hour, yet we sit still and unaware and unfeeling of the many gravitational forces at work. This duality can relate to theories of crime as well.
Two major theories of crime that are implied by the movie, are rational calculation theory, and the deterministic perspective. In short, the former assumes that humans are capable of calculating what’s good for them and acting accordingly. This positions criminal behavior as a result of choice and will. The latter pinpoints crime as the result of psychological or physical forces, suggesting the perpetrator acts due to forces beyond their own control. The movie acts as a positivist, locating links to these theories, to test or hypothesize if one is truer than the other.
The first glimpse of a precrime arrest happens when the movie shows a man about to stab his wife for catching her cheating on him. Given that he was arrested on the spot and “haloed” (a concept of punishment in the movie where convicts are put to eternal sleep) without a chance for a trail, indicates that the precog system is convinced by psychological determinism. In the case of that man, his intents of murder were based on impulsivity, rage, and the desire for self-righteous revenge. Other forms of determinism depend on traits like conditions and disorders like ADHD or having physical characteristics that meet criminal types or behavior (aka profiling). It is why, when the man wailed, “But I didn’t do anything” when he was caught, Anderton and his team reply, “But you were going to,” the perfunctory explanation bearing similar logic to the one he gave Witwer earlier. There are two flaws in this.
The first of the two, is that if civilians are made aware of the existence of the precog system, which according to their heavy advertisements present throughout the movie they are, then knowing they’d get haloed without a chance to repent or be judged in trial (the man who was going to stab his wife was shown to recognize the halo, and flinched and yelled in an attempt to resist being put under it, revealing that the people know how the precrime department operates) then they would avoid temptations or intentions to commit crime. Acknowledgement of punishment would supposedly deter crime. But as the movie has shown, people continue to find themselves driven to crime, otherwise the precrime department wouldn’t have lasted for so long and kept so busy. But the fact the essence of crime still continues even though its rates have dropped, proves to be an act of determinism itself, and yet another paradox. The second flaw, or limitation, would be that of this idea, free will is treated separately from intentions.
Rational calculation theory, however, is given a chance when chief Anderton discovers he is the next target of precrime. A sequence of events begins where escapes the precrime department, only to confront his supposed victim in the end. He wills not to kill Crow, leaving room for rational calculation, but Crow ends up dying anyways by accident, giving determinism a comeback. The problem here is, would someone else who hadn’t had the privilege Anderton had of witnessing the prevision to make the same choice he had? Director Lamar was placed in a similar position when he threatened Anderton but was only able to change the future that the precogs saw because he saw it too, circling back to rational calculation theory. In addition, because of his rank and knowledge of the precog system, he was able to get away with a secret murder that was under wraps for years, which was only exposed in the movie because of extensive, coincidental, behind-the-scenes investigation.
Conclusively, one theory cannot serve exclusively as a determinant of crime over the other. Moreover, as the movie has shown, different characters have different reasonings for their behavior. For example, Anderton was motivated to join the precrime department because his son was kidnapped and most likely murdered. When the prevision revealed him to be the next murderer, he did not surrender because he believed he was being set up. If his faith in the precog system was absolute, he would have just given himself in. He instead chose to find an alternative resolve. The director, meanwhile, found a loophole in the precog system and murdered somebody but justified it out of utilitarian intent. He also committed suicide in the end, a form of murder undiscussed in the context of precogs. Therefore, neither determinism nor rational calculation theory could contend with the diverse events that took place in Minority Report.
From Tangier, Morocco, Nadia Benjelloun is a poet, essayist, and novelist. Most recently, she authored A Vigilant Mind (The Good Life Literary Review, 2021), and has been featured in over a dozen journals. She has also made an appearance in Publishers Weekly Magazine, been a guest on The Daily Spark with Dr. Angela Chester, and was a speaker at the Arab Writers Union Conference (2015). She graduated with honors from the University of New England with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies in May 2021 and has a forthcoming novel.