What Do We Do With the Monsters?

Policing and prisons are under intense examination these days, and attempts to defund police and eliminate prisons are made to seem like realistic options. Science fiction has always offered possible options for dealing with dangerous criminals, many of which read more like fantasies than viable solutions based on an understanding of human psychology. Those options can be roughly divided into two categories: punishment and rehabilitation. Both exist within a larger framework, that of prevention -- protecting the public from further violence.

Prevention and punishment look very much the same as a general rule. Within prison walls, the rule of law is no longer relevant. Prisoners are further punished, or not, according to the penal philosophy of the top officials. The unoffical mandate set by those officials is carried out by lower staff, often as a further demonstration of their own view of caged men as rightfully subject to the random and arbitrary use of power.

What can be said about the ways in which dangerous criminals are punished? What questions can be asked that should be asked by society at large, but rarely are? Can a science fiction story offer any real answers to the question of what to do with "monsters?" And how could those answers, if indeed there are any, apply to the larger problem of mass incarceration?


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