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News

News: May/June 2014

Philosopher points to a possible future in which ‘life in prison’ means 1,000 years • Do ethicists need a code of ethics? — News reports by Sue Roberts

Doing Extended Time

Philosophers at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute think about ways in which technological advances could enhance our lives and our ability to deal with ethical challenges. Some of them have now been applying their attention to questions of crime and punishment. Dr Rebecca Roache (in an interview with Aeon magazine and in more detail on her blog) predicted that future technology may one day be used to transform perceptions of time passing to make a prisoner’s jail sentence feel as though it lasted 1,000 years. She points out that for the most heinous crimes, some will feel that a life prison sentence is insufficient punishment, yet the death penalty faces well-known objections. She identified two ways in which this could be done: Firstly, drugs could be used to distort prisoners’ sense of time.

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