Precrime
Precrime is a term invented by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (George Orwell spoke of "thought crimes" in his science fiction in 1984 ). The term is increasingly used in criminological literature (mostly in the spelling pre-crime ) to describe and at the same time criticize a change in the subject matter of modern criminal prosecution systems .
Concept history
"Precrime" was made famous by Steven Spielberg's 2002 film Minority Report , which goes back to 1956 by Philip K. Dick 's short story of the same name . In this story, “Precrime” is the name of a law enforcement agency whose job it is to identify and arrest individuals who will commit crimes in the future. The work of this authority is based on the existence of so-called "Precogs". These are people with visionary abilities who are artificially kept in a vegetable state and whose brain waves are evaluated by computers. Authority chief Anderton explains the advantages of this procedure: "There are no major crimes in our society ... but we have a detention facility full of potential criminals". The term pre-crime has been defined as the use of “considerable state coercive measures in the case of non-imminent crime” (McCulloch / Wilson 2016).
Pre-crime in criminology
The idea of dealing with potential criminals goes back to the positivist school in the 19th century, not least to Cesare Lombroso's idea of the “born criminal”, who can be recognized by certain physical characteristics. In the early 20th century, biological, psychological, and sociological forms of criminological positivism influenced state criminal policy. Various methods of “rendering harmless” ( Franz von Liszt ) were propagated for “born criminals”, “criminal psychopaths” and “dangerous habitual criminals” : death penalty , indefinite custody, castration, etc. (cf. Radzinowicz 1991). A hundred years later there is a tendency towards “actuarial justice” (Feely / Simon 1994), that is to say towards a criminal justice system that is no longer based on a concrete determination of guilt, but on probability statements about classes of potential perpetrators. The emerging new “security society” (Singelnstein 2012) or “pre-crime society” requires a new critical criminology (Zedner 2007).
Pre-crime in practice
Penal enforcement
In the past, the conviction and punishment presupposed the demonstrable existence of a culpable crime. This self-evident basis of constitutional criminal law will be abandoned if sanctions can be imposed for crimes that have not yet been committed. Inkeri Antilla, later Minister of Justice of Finland, the example of this development at an early essay (Antilla 1975) preventive detention , criticized. The experts appointed by the court take the place of the “precogs”. Approaches to this have long been found in the increasing importance of prognoses in criminal law and the penal system. This tendency is also represented by the entire law of measures in Germany : “Measures are independent of guilt, they can be imposed alongside or instead of punishment. Its purpose is to improve dangerous perpetrators or to protect the general public ”(Fischer 2015, before § 61 StGB marginal number 1). The law on measures does not focus on guilt, but primarily on the future “ danger ” for the general public. While the measure of preventive detention introduced in 1933 still required a crime to be committed, the " subsequent preventive detention " introduced in 2004 largely got rid of it. This was criticized in 2009 by the European Court of Human Rights as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights .
Predictive policing
The logic of pre-crime has long been part of police practice, in that searches are often not carried out on the basis of a specific suspicion against a specific person, but on the basis of generalized suspicion features, such as B. "suspicious area", "suspicious appearance", "suspicious behavior" (Feest 1972, p. 35 ff). According to the newer police laws, identity determinations are also permissible in certain places regardless of a concrete suspicion, if crimes of considerable importance are “agreed, prepared or committed” there “according to experience” (e.g. § 11 BremPolG). The development of computer-aided methods for forecasting the locations and perpetrators of future crimes has placed this practice on a new technological basis. In Germany, the social scientist Thomas Schweer has developed software that he calls the “Pre Crime Observation System” (PRECOBS) (Schweer 2015). “The predictability of PRECOBS is essentially based on the observation that after a criminal offense - especially in the case of burglary - often follow-up offenses occur within a short temporal and spatial distance” (Gerstner 2017, p. 18). The main weakness of this approach is that these probability predictions are based on the police knowledge of reported / uncovered crimes; the more or less large dark field cannot be included in the forecasts. The prognosis is circular, so it essentially concerns the "usual suspects". To date, there are various predictive policing solutions in Germany, some of which differ greatly in methodology and implementation (as of 2020).
"Dangerous"
In German police law, the general clause is the principle that the police may take the "necessary measures" "to avert a specific threat to public safety or order (danger) that exists in an individual case" (e.g. § 8 para. 1 PolG NRW). In police practice, the term “ dangerous ”, which has not yet been defined by law, has recently been used, which is intended to enable measures to be taken against a person labeled in this way, regardless of a specific danger. In the case of released offenders, the police make "dangerous speeches". In connection with terrorism in particular, coercive measures are also being taken against those persons for whom “certain facts justify the assumption that they will commit politically motivated crimes of 'considerable importance'”. For this purpose, the § 58a Residence Act was introduced in 2005, which makes it possible to issue a deportation order against a foreigner without prior threat of deportation, "based on a fact-based prognosis to avert a particular danger to the security of the Federal Republic of Germany or a terrorist threat ”. See also McCulloch / Pickering (2007), where the practice of “imagining” terrorist threats by state authorities is treated as an example of pre-crime.
criticism
Pre-crime is part of a development of bringing forward criminal law and expanding preventive police intervention. This means that constitutional guarantees and safeguards are lost. There is no room for the presumption of innocence in the context of preventive measures. Critics therefore demand the development and statutory fixing of corresponding guarantees for the area of prevention , such as a "presumption of harmlessness" (Zedner 2009; Ashworth / Zedner 2014).
See also
Web links
- Pre-Crime - Documentary by Monika Hielscher and Mathias Heeder, 2017
literature
- Antilla, Inkeri: Incarceration for Crimes never Committed, Helsinki 1975.
- Dick, Philip K .: Minority Report. London 2002, 1–43 (German: The Minority Report. In: All 118 SF-Stories, Two Thousand One Publishing House, Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3861508038 ).
- Feeley, Malcolm / Simon, Jonathan: Actuarial Justice: the emerging new criminal law. In: David Nelken (Ed.) The Futures of Criminology. London 1994, 173-185.
- Feest, Johannes: Abolition in the times of pre-crime. In: Thomas Mathiesen, The Politics of Abolition Revisited. New York 2015,263-271.
- Gerstner, Dominik: Predictive Policing as an Instrument for Preventing Burglaries. Evaluation results for the Baden-Württemberg pilot project P4. MPI for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg 2017.
- McCullogh, Jude / Wilson, Dean: Pre-Crime: Preemption, Precaution and the Future. London and New New 2016.
- McCulloch, Jude / Pickering, Sharon: “Pre-Crime and Counter-Terrorism. Imagining Future Crime in the 'War on Terror' ”. In: British Journal of Criminology, 49/5 (2009), 628-645.
- Radzinowicz, Sir Leon: The Roots of the International Association of Criminal Law and their Significance. Freiburg 1991 (criminological research reports from the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, vol. 45).
- Schweer, T. (2015). “Before the perpetrator at the crime scene” - pattern-based crime scene predictions using the example of a burglary. The criminal investigation department 1, 13-16.
- Singelnstein, Tobias / Stolle, Peer: The security society. Social Control in the 21st Century. 3rd, completely revised edition. VS-Verl, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-17531-7
- Zedner, Lucia: Preventive Detention of the Dangerous. In: Andrew Ashworth / Luica Zedner / Patrick Tomlin (Eds.) Prevention and the limits of the Criminal Law. Oxford University Press 2014, 144-170.
- Zedner, Lucia: Security. London 2009, 72 ff.
- Zedner, Lucia: Pre-crime and post-criminology ?. In: Theoretical Criminology, vol. 11, no. 2 (2007), 261-281.
Individual evidence
- ^ Felix Bode, Kai Seidensticker: Predictive Policing. An inventory for the German-speaking area . Ed .: Felix Bode, Kai Seidensticker. Verlag für Policewissenschaft, Frankfurt / Main 2020, ISBN 978-3-86676-597-9 .
- ↑ Birgit Müller: Addressing the threat: Concept, possibilities, limits , advanced training institute of the Bavarian police
- ^ Information from State Secretary Dr. August Hanning in response to a question from MP Nescovic on November 21, 2006 [1]