Of all the crimes that humans are capable of committing, murder is by far the most atrocious. The taking of another human life has a finality to it, an act that cannot ever be undone. But what if it could be prevented?
That simple question is the premise for two science fiction works of the twenty-first century, the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report and the television drama Person of Interest. Although the methods used in each are different, there are many similarities between the two nonetheless, including the need to sacrifice civil liberties in order to create a murder-free society and how the concept of “free will” dictates whether a potential event may or may not actually take place.
In Minority Report, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, John Anderton is captain of a Washington, D.C. special police force known as PreCrime. The PreCrime Unit bases their intelligence on three highly precognitive humans – kept in an isolated water basin – who have the capability to predict murders before they take place. As a result, there hasn’t been a homicide in the region in over six years.
It is explained that these “precogs” – as they are called – “don’t see what you intend to do, only what you will do.” Based on the information provided by them, Anderton and his team are able to arrive at a murder scene before the murder takes place, and in effect act as judge and jury as they “halo” the suspect, placing them in a state of suspended animation for life.
Person of Interest, meanwhile, follows the efforts of computer genius Harold Finch and former special operative John Reese to prevent violent crimes from occurring in New York City. Their “ally” in this mission is a machine created by Finch on behalf of the U.S. government that sifts through surveillance camera images, cell phones conversations, and e-mails exchanges in order to predict criminal activity.
Because the machine was initially designed to prevent terrorism, “irrelevant” information is erased at midnight of each day. It is this irrelevant information that Harold Finch is able to secretly access and then use to prevent acts of murder from taking place.
Although Minority Report uses humans for its information while Person of Interest relies on a machine, in both cases the data received is incomplete and must be deciphered. John Anderton, for instance, is simply given the names of both the suspected murderer and their victim, as well as a series of images captured from the precogs vision. Using this limited information, Anderton is able to piece together the location of the predicted crime.
Harold Finch, meanwhile, is given even less information on Person of Interest – a solitary social security number of a person who might be either the victim or the perpetrator. Like John Anderton, Finch must take this small amount of data and recreate the person’s life before the event occurs.
Both the precogs of Minority Report and the machine of Person of Interest have limits. When it comes to acts of premeditation, both systems have enough time to predict the crime in question. Murders that take place in the “heat of the moment,” however, are not as easy to foresee because of the spontaneity of the actions. On Minority Report, this means that the PreCrime Unit has a smaller window in which to decipher the information provided by the precogs.
The machine on Person of Interest, meanwhile, does not have the ability to predict “crimes of passion” at all. “I’m at the scene of a homicide, wondering why the machine can see one and miss another,” John Reese says to Harold Finch, who responds, “Sorry, Mr. Reese, the machine detects acts of premeditation.”
While the concept of a murder-free society is obviously one of great value to society, there is a price to be paid on both Minority Report and Person of Interest in regards to civil liberties. In Minority Report, the thoughts of individual people are in effect “read” by a small trio of precogs – albeit thoughts of criminal activity – and suspects are imprisoned in a state of animation for a crime they have not actually committed. On Person of Interest, the machine that foresees violent acts relies on the secret surveillance by the government on all citizens of the United States.
During the course of Minority Report, a flaw in the system is detected when the precogs predict that the next murder will be committed by John Anderton. To prove his innocence, Anderton kidnaps one of the precogs – the female Agatha – in the hopes of gaining more information about his upcoming actions. Although Agatha claims that what she saw was real, she also says that the future is not engraved in stone.
“You still have a choice,” she tells Anderton. “The others never saw their future.”
John Reese raises the issue of free will on Person of Interest as well. During the first season episode “Cura Te Ipsum,” Dr. Megan Tillman is determined to kill the man who raped her sister in college, an event that led to her sibling’s suicide. Reese, however, confronts Tillman before the act of revenge occurs.
“I know all about you, Megan,” he tells her. “I know you’re a damn good doctor. I know that you’ve spent years of your life healing people. And I know if you do this, if you murder this man in cold blood, you will kill you. You don’t have to do this. You can turn around right now.”
Both Person of Interest and Minority Report contain a world where murder can be prevented. The two narratives likewise demonstrate that no future is fully predictable as free will still plays a role in our actions regardless of what has been foreseen by either man or machine. The two fictional narratives also raise the question of whether society is willing to sacrifice civil liberties for a safer world, and whether such a world is worth the loss of basic freedoms.
No one, after all, could disagree with the concept of a murder-free society – but at what price are we willing to pay in order to achieve it?
Anthony Letizia