(Analysis) Imagine a world where crimes are stopped before they occur. Science fiction has imagined this world, most famously in the 2002 film Minority Report, where society can predict criminal behavior and allow authorities to intervene in advance.
Today, with the advent of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, the once distant fantasy of dystopia is moving closer to reality. But with that comes a tangle of ethical, philosophical, and practical dilemmas that raise the question of whether technology can really stop sin.
The concept of a pre-criminal stage is not purely fictitious. Police departments and security agencies around the world are experimenting with predictive algorithms that analyze past crimes, social patterns, and online behavior to predict who will commit crimes and where. Recent mass shootings in Canada have once again brought to the fore the power of pre-crime to deter such crimes in the future.
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In theory, it sounds like a public safety dream: less crime and less suffering. But the question is: is predicting wrongdoing the same as preventing it, and whether it’s morally right to intervene based on what someone might do?
Artificial intelligence has the unique ability to recognize patterns at a scale that human intelligence cannot match. Algorithms can detect such behavior. This raises an interesting thought: If AI can identify potential criminals, could it prevent the crime itself? In a world plagued by violence and lack of morality, other questions arise about free will and freedom.
Under Pasco County, Florida’s so-called “Intelligence-Led Policing” program, the county’s sheriff’s department compiled a list of people it believed could commit a crime and repeatedly dispatched agents to their homes. More than 1,000 Pasco residents, including minors, were targeted for unannounced visits by police, citing reasons such as missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass.
Four residents ultimately sued the county in 2021. In 2024, a settlement was reached acknowledging that the Sheriff’s Department violated residents’ constitutional privacy rights and equal treatment under the law. As a result, the program was discontinued.
This problem is not limited to Florida. In 2020, the city of Chicago eliminated its Strategic Target List, a system in which police use analytics to predict which ex-convicts are most likely to commit new crimes. In 2021, the Los Angeles Police Department also stopped using PredPol, a computer program designed to predict crime hotspots.
AI accuracy aside, there are philosophical questions about sin. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, sin is a choice, not an act. It is a combination of conscience (or lack of conscience) and impulse (lack of self-control).
We live in a broken world where God gives us free will. Computer code cannot completely erase moral wrongs. While we can certainly reduce the opportunity to do harm, we cannot design a world free of moral flaws without erasing freedom and privacy.
Proponents of pre-crime programs argue that they reduce harm but also create a surveillance state. It will change a society where fear takes precedence over morality. If we try to stop sin, we risk creating a society that mistakes constraints for virtues.
The broader lesson here may be that technology, while a great tool, is not a panacea for restoring morality to our society. AI can help manage outcomes and identify risks, but it cannot change human nature.
