Discussion Forum: Barless Prison
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Ever since the first true nanomedicine product came on the market, a caged cancer drug that releases once bound to the cancer cell, researchers have been working towards utilizing these technologies for control purposes. This week it was announced that NanoCage, in collaboration with United Penitentiary Systems, have developed the first barless prison. Upon entry, inmates are injected with a cocktail of caged drugs that have a variety of effects when released via radio control. The base technology utilizes focused radio waves to target deep tissue tumors in places such as the abdominal cavity.
The basis for security is a net of radio transmitters that surrounds the facility. As a prisoner crosses the perimeter threshold, the radio signals will cause the release of one type of caged drug. For instance, if the prisoner crosses an inner ‘warning’ perimeter, a drug will be released that causes extreme vertigo and mild nausea. If the prisoner continues, the next perimeter will signal the release of incapacitating sedatives, and if the next signal is reached it will trigger a fatal dose of narcotics. These perimeters are spaced far apart enough to prevent unintentional crossing of more than the first.
The caged drug is connected to an antenna that upon receipt of a specific radio signal causes the physical break down of the carbon-nanotube-based cage. The package including the antenna is roughly half the size of a red blood cell. A coating of biocompatible molecules minimizes the physiological side effects from the caged drugs. There is, on very rare occasions, mild inflammatory responses that can be treated with over the counter anti-inflammatory drugs. Because some degradation of the caged drugs occurs naturally in the body, supplemental injections are advised every six weeks and always after drugs have been released.
Guards in barless facilities will be equipped with radio transmitters that can be aimed at individual inmates or larger areas to quell local unrest. The transmitters used by the guards will be unable to access the frequencies that trigger the fatal dosages.
NanoCage and United Penitentiary Systems claim this is the new model for working prisons, where inmate labor is unencumbered by restraints or monitoring devices and physical investment costs are not much more than traditional factories. The perimeter of these facilities need only be physically secured to keep people from trespassing on the grounds.
Posted Wednesday, 07/02/2008, 6:18pm AZ This is insane. Sorry, it is. I could understand, MAYBE, the first level (basic nausea/disorientation), simply because other debilitating devices already exist (tasers, pepper spray, etc. etc.). However, other posters are correct in saying that death should not be the automatic punishment for escape, nor should it even be a part of this containment system.
If this system were put in place, we would be treating prisoners not as people, but as beings lower than animals. I see dog fences everywhere, that simply use a discomforting shock to remind the dog not to leave the yard. Dog fences aren't designed to kill the dog if it strays too far. This is why I could understand a system that causes discomfort if an escape were attempted (and would thus debilitate the escapee and make recapture easier), but I could never understand a system that kills automatically. Are we to say that those in prisons are worth less to society than dogs? Sure, some people have done unspeakable things. This is why we have death row, or maximum security prisons. But we still treat them like humans while they are serving their punishment.
To implement this system would be inhuman and degrading. Too much, as pointed out by others, is uncontrollable, or has the potential to be abused or misused.
Posted Friday, 06/27/2008, 7:00am AZ The commentd Friday, 05/09/2008, 4:12pm AZ is absolutely correct. Please if you are going to come up with scenarios that will color peoples perceptions of what nanotechnology really holds for the future, please at least come up with sceanrio that is based on 21st century technology. There is no way any legislator, governor, court you name the branch of gov, that would embark upon an idea that is so non-precise (as the earlier post pointed out) that it is not even an option. I hope that the poster did everyone a huge favor and edited the "future" scene to employ digital technology to make the scene more plausible and that the maintainers of this site will update the "future" accordingly
Posted Monday, 05/19/2008, 4:41pm AZ This is a fascinating scenario since there are numerous reasons individuals might be for or against this type of prison.
First, it may seem appealing that finally a virtually escape-proof prison could be built, and that prison officials would be able to exert a very high level of control, without needing to resort to direct violence.
Second, we could also imagine that, in time, these prisons might be cheaper than existing prisons today, since physical barriers would not be necessary.
However, there are many reasons why we should be apprehensive about such an application of nanotechnology.
The Center for Nanotechnology and Society mentions some of the possible side-effects of injecting such potentially lethal drugs into a human system. Of foremost concern is the idea that an inmate would be required to take certain treatments the remainder of his or her life to counteract the degradation of these nano-drugs. This suggests that there is a high probability that there may be long-term complications of this approach to prison enforcement.
There is also the concern that if, somehow, a prisoner managed to disable the radio controls, then suddenly all of the inmates would be able to escape. This is different than the situation in most prisons today, since escapes can only very rarely happen on a large scale – usually only one or a handful of people can escape at once.
Another concern is that, if these drugs are triggered by radio control, that there might be instances of misfiring or malfunctioning. After all, radio signals travel through our bodies, dozens of frequencies at a time, every second. Just as individuals sometimes have their radios triggered by their cellular phones, or inadvertently hear other people’s telephone calls, it is feasible that nausea or even death could be inadvertently triggered.
Finally, there is also the question of whether or not people – namely, prison guards – should possess this level of control over other people – inmates. After all, people escape from prison on a fairly regular basis in today’s society. However, if these people are later apprehended, their punishment is rarely – almost never, unless they committed additional crimes – death. But in this scenario, authorities would be setting-up a situation in which death was assured for such an offense. Should modern society accept the premise that death is warranted for people who desire freedom? Many of whom – if we assume the judicial system in our NanoFuture is equally as fallible as ours today – may actually be innocent and by all rights deserving of freedom?
Full discussion: http://nano-ology.blogspot.com/
Posted Friday, 05/09/2008, 4:12pm AZ Wow. Just wow.
First of all, this is a really dumb idea for all of the obvious reasons that people have mentioned before... outside people being able to wander into the prison, prisoners being able to force each other into "forbidden zones", bootleg traffic in transmitters to both prisoners and outsiders, and, frankly, lack of any advantages whatsoever over the existing wall-based technology.
It also shows such ignorance of how RF works that I don't really know what to say.
First of all, if you build something that's going to kill somebody in response to "pure tone" RF, that person is going to drop dead at some point, because all kinds of frequencies are everywhere. That is, unless it requires a lot of power to trigger it... which in fact it probably would, because an antenna smaller than a red blood cell wouldn't pick up much. But if you have that much RF energy floating around, it's going to affect all sorts of equipment and possibly people. And it's not clear you could package it in something a guard would really want to carry. And it would be easy for the prisoners to shield themselves enough to knock the energy down from the level it would probably have to be.
Second, you can't magically constrain an RF field to just any area you want. It's not like the field is "there" in one place and "not there" a few inches away; it falls off according to an inverse square law. So you'd end up having to have either a huge continuous transmitting antenna or so many transmitting antennae that you'd basically end up with a "wall of transmitters" instead of the much cheaper and more effective "wall of concrete".
You also can't jam a pure frequency (as somebody seems to have suggested in the Wiki as a way to avoid unauthorized kill buttons). You can destructively interfere with a frequency along a line as long as you know the phase, the amplitude, and exactly when it's going to come on. Which you don't, because it's being generated by an adversary. Anyway, you can't destructively interfere over a whole 2D or 3D area... just along one line, unless the two transmitters are colocated, which they definitely wouldn't be.
So you'd have to use a non-pure frequency, and ideally a digitally modulated signal, and you'd have to prevent abuse using cryptographic authentication. All of that would change the cages from relatively simple first-generation devices to sophisticated products of a mature nanotechnology.
That ignores the bio issues... although I am less sure of this than I am of the RF part, I doubt you could make something like that that would actually circulate in somebody's blood for 6 weeks without causing trouble.
I think the important lesson of this scenario is actually one people may not want to hear: if you don't have some sort of basic grasp of what the technology might and might not be able to do, or if you don't have a clue about the real demands of the application you're suggesting, YOU'RE NOT QUALIFIED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE DISCUSSION.
This sort of process should be open to everybody, but the participants need to do their part before they join. You need to actually learn hard facts about real things to speculate productively about the impacts of future technologies. There are already enough unknowns; getting involved without the necessary background changes the discussion from one about possibly realistic technology applied to possibly realistic problems to one about what amounts to magic pixie dust applied to imaginary ones.
Posted Friday, 05/09/2008, 7:31am AZ There are several drawbacks to this situation that have been pointed out. I think it is a pretty good idea, but how practical is it. I for one don't really care about the safety of the prisoners in this country. Most of them are very bad people. I think it would also scare a lot of people into acting right so that they do not go to prison. I mean prison should be a scary place.
Posted Friday, 05/09/2008, 6:04am AZ What a hellacious mistake.
The systems you postulate are not able to prevent external influence - think drugs or weapons smuggling into the prison - nor are they tested for safety - what if a prisoner is allergic to the 'safe' first dose? - to flat out murder weapon provision to the inmates - all it takes to kill someone is to force them out of the third ring of transmitters.
Poorly conceived.
Note also that, as per others' posts here, this *could be done TODAY*. Nanotech does very little if anything for you except up the pricetag on the final system.
Posted Thursday, 05/08/2008, 5:41pm AZ Today, this type of “self-administered” aversive therapy might be OK; it would certainly relieve other humans from being “punishers”.
However, as a positive futurist I see a time within the next couple of decades where the focus will be on adding huge number-crunching abilities to our brains with artificial “nano-neurons”.
This technology will enable everyone to run hundreds or thousands of “what-if” questions in a second or two when faced with decision-making, which would nearly always help people come up with the correct decision.
“Should I commit this act of hostility or violence against this person?” Processing several hundred simulations in a split second or so would, according to forward-thinkers, result in a decision against performing any negative act.
Would this radical technology eliminate most crime, violence, and conflicts between humans? Many think that it will.
Foresight Institute consultant John Burch predicts that body changes like these could begin in late 2030s, and he describes how the upgrades would be accomplished. “A daily pill would supply materials and instructions for nanobots to format new cells and position them next to existing biological cells to be replaced. These changes would be unnoticeable to us, but within six months, we would be enjoying the benefits of a new body part.”
Comments welcome.
Posted Thursday, 05/08/2008, 4:47pm AZ This is asking for someone to forge the radio signal and kill all (or some) of the prisoners. If the system is created by a closed source vendor with no accountability to open their source code to indepenedent and/or public scrutiny, it WILL be poorly engineered for security (think voting machines).
The point of a prison is as much to keep society out as to keep prisoners in. if you have to build walls and bars to accomplish the former, why spend so much extra resources on changing the latter?
Posted Thursday, 05/08/2008, 3:41pm AZ This specific use of nanotechnology is very abstract and I am unsure if this is at all applicable. I don't know if anything could replace concrete and steel. Why not begin tracking prisoners with RFID's and move on from there? If you release a toxin to cause 'extreme vertigo and mild nausea,' why not release a toxin that would cause symptoms similar to mild tetanus? That would make the prisoners harmless.
I believe prisoners should have to give more than just their time in this situation. If they acquiesce or not, this is situation is an opportunity. An opportunity to test the plausibility of this type of nanotechnological application.
Posted Thursday, 05/08/2008, 3:40pm AZ Certainly makes you think about 21st century restraining orders doesn't it?
Posted Wednesday, 05/07/2008, 10:50am AZ As electronic dog fences and human ankle collars suggest, this kind of thing could be done with current technology. So you have to ask yourself, why isn't it already used more widely? (Indeed, why not drug the very food prisoners eat to make them more tractable?) Is the problem a technical one that nanotech will "solve,", or is it something to do with our understandings of punishment and human agency?
Posted Monday, 05/05/2008, 12:07pm AZ Just do it... make it happen!
Posted Friday, 05/02/2008, 4:12pm AZ What would the implications be for the current problems with the prison system? It seems like these barless facilities would be easier to build, so would the issue of an overloaded prison system simply disappear? However, because these caged drugs have to be injected into prisoners every six weeks, it is likely that the financial burden will grow, unless these drugs can be inexpensively manufactured on a large scale.
Posted Tuesday, 04/15/2008, 12:29pm AZ This is a horrifying idea. Our prison system is already so corrupt I only see this going very wrong. My first argument for this is that physical constraints such as walls and bars are also in place to protect the prisoner from other dangerous prisoners. Believe it or not there are non dangerous criminals placed in prisons next to murderers and rapists.
My next argument is that a lot of prisoners serve a sentence of only a year or two. How long will these drugs be in the system waiting to cause harm. Also how will we know if a prisoner is fatally allergic to such a drug.
A prisoner should only be required to give their time, not their blood, health , or life.
Posted Thursday, 04/03/2008, 4:36pm AZ Hello. I am accessing this page for the first time, and I must say, it is quite exciting! I what a pleasure it is to finally see our long hours of hard work come to fruition. Here's looking to the future!