Precrime

Origins of the concept

In Philip K. Dick's 1956 science fiction short story "The Minority Report", PreCrime is the name of a criminal justice agency, the task of which is to identify and eliminate persons who will commit crimes in the future. The agency's work is based on the existence of "precog mutants", a trio of "vegetable-like" humans whose "every incoherent utterance" is analyzed by a punch card computer. As Anderton, the chief of the PreCrime agency, explains the advantages of this procedure, "in our society we have no major crimes ... but we do have a detention camp full of would-be criminals". He cautions about the basic legal drawback to pre-crime methodology, "We're taking in individuals who have broken no law." The concept was brought to wider public attention by Steven Spielberg's 2002 film Minority Report, loosely adapted from the story. The Japanese cyberpunk anime television series Psycho-Pass (2012–2013) had a similar concept.