Could Mind-Jail and Psychoactive Drugs Fix Overcrowded Prisons?

[Jazzy]

A team of scholars at Oxford, led by philosopher Rebecca Roache, recently proposed the concept of using psychoactive drugs and futuristic technologies like mind-transfer to trick a prisoner’s brain into thinking they've been in prison for 1,000 years, even if it’s really only been a few hours.

After the initial shock that this may even be possible, the idea raises an interesting question: Could this be a way to get people in and out of prison quicker, in essence solving the overcrowding problem in today’s prisons?

There are currently about 2.4 million people behind bars in the US, more than any other country in the world. Since the onset of the “War on Drugs,” the prison population has risen 700 percent. Housing and feeding convicts costs taxpayers $51 billion a year for drug-related offenses alone. It’s a problem begging for a solution.

In an interview with Aeon Magazine, Roache said that certain psychoactive drugs could make “someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence.” She also talked about artificial life extension.

Roache also proposed the concept of uploading your brain. If you could upload a prisoners brain to a computer, by matching the ways the neurons and other aspects of the brain operate, the person could live indefinitely. Someone that lives indefinitely could be punished indefinitely. A virtual reality game that you can't get out of no matter how much you want to.

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So could using medical technology to rethink punishment be the solution? Why / Why not?

 

[gaze-universe]

Is it really a mans right to find ways to punish people for years much more than they would physically live? Would it not even be possible these kinds of 'thousand or indefinite' punishments would mess this person up and make him incapable of living in society ever again?

Is that a punishment then anymore?

 

[Nebulous]

Medication is not prison. Simple enough.

 

[Evil Eye]

Medication is not prison. Simple enough.

Indeed, this sounds many times worse.

 

[DrLeftover]

Thorazine has been in use for years.

Same thing.