I was reading a book a few weeks ago (The Second Angel by Philip Kerr) and within a few pages I’d had a ‘Eureka’ moment although how you can claim to have a Eureka moment when the book has had the idea first, I don’t know? Anyway, the book was set in 2080 and was about a penal colony on the moon, to which the worst offenders on earth were sent. It was like a form of hard labour and there was no means of escape – obviously.
And so I thought – brilliant. Why don’t we do this today? Why not send all these lifers whose crimes are so bad they will never get parole, (i.e. the ones we’d do away with if we still had capital punishment) – why don’t we send them off to the moon where they could build the bases we’ll need for deeper space exploration. If they killed each other – so what? If they knuckle down and build the bases – great. In one fell swoop we get rid of all the low-life in society and get some infrastructure on the moon into the bargain. We’ll save money by not having these people in prison and we’ll make space (pun intended) for the people who should go to prison but don’t because there’s no room for them. OK, it will take a few years to get organized but what a great investment it would be.
Apparently, space travel and the associated prolonged periods with low gravity causes all sorts of health disorders which is a bit of a problem when it’s ‘ordinary’ decent astronauts who have to do it but who cares when they are lifers.
And, as I was sitting dreaming up this brilliant penal scheme, I happened to come across the US web site for ‘Correctional Institutions’ or Slammers as we call them in the UK. I’ve no idea where I found it (and I know it’s only a tenuous link to my blog) but it’s great – go to the ‘Inmate Locator’, type in ‘Bernard Madoff’ and there the old scoundrel is (you remember him – swindled $40 billion off his friends) – release date 2139! Yes – read it again – 2139. We’ll definitely have lunar penal colonies by then – for sure!
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