In 2014, philosopher Rebecca Roache opened up about how her team was developing “ways futuristic technologies might transform punishment.” Their idea? Using biotechnology to make a person feel like they’re serving a 1,000-year sentence in prison! But how?
They want to create a time-slowing pill or drug because, Roache said, a lifetime sentence isn’t long enough. According to her, incarcerated people get out of “crimes … [that] require a really long period of punishment” by dying before they’ve been punished enough!
Warping reality to create longer sentences could “achieve justice,” she claimed. But it isn’t just about “justice.”
It’s about money. Roache’s idea to distort our minds using computers to speed up time would allow “the vilest criminals” to serve 1,000 years in just a few hours – making it “much cheaper for the taxpayer.”
But this would just be a way to monetize something prisons already do.
Prison torture tactics like solitary confinement already distort time. And, without the extra technology that Roache dubs “radical innovation[s],” prison torture is already defined as inhumane and often fatally devastating to one’s mental health.
We can't know what'll happen in the future, but what we do know is that anti-Black dehumanization gets passed off as "innovation" all the time. These aren't creative solutions for anyone - the prison system is just getting crueler.