The Justice Of The Future

The 71-year-old who caused S$100 worth of damage - incurred to clean up graffiti ("We support CPF blogger" and "Return our CPF money") scrawled on bus stands - was sent to jail for 4 weeks.  Even if he had a valid Pioneer Generation Card on him at time of arrest - conceived to recognise and honour the contributions of Singapore’s Pioneer Generation in nation-building - it would not qualify for a get-out-of-jail-free ticket.

The teenager who was arrested for vandalising the rooftop at Toa Payoh housing block 85A was placed on probation for 15 months and required to perform 80 hours of community service. His graffiti case involved a more explicit message, expletives included, and the writing on the wall could not be missed.

Once upon a time, we had a chief justice who boasted that the quality of his justice dispensed was dependent on his satisfaction with the breakfast he was served that particular morning. He could get away with it; he loaned his lecture notes to a prime minister when both were studying in Cambridge. And you thought Marlon Brando's Godfather knew how to collect.

But Graaaskov was not physically involved in the crime of the century, okay, maybe 50 years. He was such a obedient child, he left early so as not to miss the last bus home, and upset his doting parents for breaking a curfew. In other words, he was not guilty as charged. He was cuffed and locked up in a detention cell for something he did not do, specifically, vandalising a rooftop.

Graaskov was punished for something else. First spelled out in a 1956 science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, and popularised by Tom Cruise in "The Minority Report", "precrime" is a system which punishes people for crimes they would have committed, had they not been prevented. As the narrative goes, had Graaskov not been apprehended, he would have had his wanton way with the spray cans. In the movie, the system of predicting the future is performed by three mutants known as "precogs", because of their precognitive talents by which they can see into the future. The local parlance is "helicopter vision", and we have our own variant of "holy trinity". The next logical step to "read only the right stuff" will soon be "think only the right stuff". Forewarned is forearmed.