Is it possible to do centuries of jail time in a few hours? East asked the opinion of an expert in neurocognition.
Yesterday I killed a man. Now I’m free after having served my forty year sentence in a neurocognitive jail, a prisoner of my own perceptions. Easy, one might think. A night has passed, but I awake in the darkness of an entire life spent in isolation. I look in the mirror and see the youth that still awaits me, yet there’s little of the glint in my eyes of who I once was.
Rebecca Roache, a philosopher of ethics at Oxford University, basing her research on recent studies on the perception of time, has prepared a hypothetical scenario of a goaled criminal having to serve an entirely virtual sentence. A thousand years in eight hours, she suggests, a sentence measured in neurocognitive time, the time he experiences, and not our ‘real’ time.
The principle is that perceived time is what actually matters and ultimately represents the true duration of a sentence – as it does of a life – while ‘real’ time is only the one that weighs on the taxpayer’s pockets who pay for the physical incarceration of the felon. Is there ever going to be a better solution than scientifically separating the two ‘times’ to our advantage?
The simple suggestion was enough to set off a storm of controversy, based on tweets, posts and (dis)likes. In this context, I’ll leave aside the current scientific impracticality of the matter, still not technically possible – although perhaps “within the realm of the possible.” The thought that it may become feasible is horrifying.
I’d rather exploit Roache’s provocation for a broader series of considerations. The first aspect concerns the concept of time and more specifically ‘appropriate’ time. All too often public opinion discusses the appropriateness of punishment that is sees as too short when weighed up against a particularly heinous crime that touches our emotions too closely.
How would society react to a 40 year sentence concentrated into a single night of neurocognitive treatment? Would the victims and society get the appropriate amount of satisfaction and State protection in such a case?
I think not. In fact, I believe that the duration of a sentence often has a third, fundamental basis for assessment. Much less rational, easily manipulated, but still powerful and dangerous – the collective perception of ‘right punishment’, which sometimes seems to discard centuries of culture and supposed Christian morality, sadly accepting ‘eye for an eye’ reasoning.
Let’s consider instead the rather optimistic case whereby society is also capable of developing its sensibility. Imagine if a neurocognitive punishment was accepted without question. In this case I wonder if waking up with the weight of a few decades of isolation, but in a body that still has its entire life to live, is something even vaguely to be hoped for.
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Is it possible to do centuries of jail time in a few hours? East asked the opinion of an expert in neurocognition.
