By Futurist Thomas Frey
The System Future Generations Will Judge Us For
By 2045, our grandchildren will visit prisons the way we visit medieval dungeons—with horror that civilized societies once considered this an acceptable solution. They’ll ask the same questions we ask about torture chambers and public executions: “How did intelligent people think this was helping anyone?”
The logic of current incarceration is genuinely insane when you examine it clearly. Take people who struggle with impulse control, addiction, mental illness, or poverty-driven desperation—people who by definition can’t navigate society’s rules successfully—and cram them into tiny cells with other people who also can’t follow rules. Remove their autonomy, employment prospects, family connections, and dignity. Subject them to violence, abuse, and dehumanization. Then release them years later, usually with no resources and a criminal record that prevents employment, and act surprised when they reoffend.
We’re not reforming people. We’re warehousing them and calling it justice.
The alternatives emerging over the next two decades will make incarceration look as primitive as bloodletting looks to modern medicine. Not because we’ve become softer on crime, but because we’ve finally developed interventions that actually work.
Neurological Intervention: Fixing What’s Actually Broken
The fundamental breakthrough will be recognizing that most criminal behavior stems from identifiable neurological patterns—impulse control deficits, addiction pathways, trauma-induced threat responses, empathy impairments. These aren’t moral failures requiring punishment. They’re medical conditions requiring treatment.
By 2035, courts will mandate neurological assessment and targeted intervention rather than incarceration for most offenses. Convicted individuals receive brain scans identifying specific dysfunction, then undergo treatments ranging from transcranial magnetic stimulation to precisely targeted pharmaceutical interventions to neural feedback training that literally rewires problematic patterns.
Someone convicted of assault due to impulse control deficits gets treatment that strengthens prefrontal cortex regulation. An addict who stole to support their habit receives intervention that disrupts addiction pathways more effectively than any current treatment. A sex offender undergoes therapy that fundamentally alters the neural patterns driving harmful behavior.
This sounds dystopian—mandatory brain modification—until you compare it to the alternative: locking someone in a cage for years, which also modifies their brain but in ways that typically make them worse. At least neurological intervention is targeted, reversible, and designed to actually address root causes rather than just inflict suffering and call it consequences.
Monitored Freedom: Supervision Without Cages
The second major shift will be constant monitoring replacing physical confinement. Ankle monitors will seem quaint—we’re talking about AI systems that track location, detect intoxication, monitor stress levels, identify pre-criminal behavior patterns, and intervene before violations occur.
Convicted individuals live at home, maintain employment, stay connected to family, but operate under algorithmic supervision more comprehensive than any human guard could provide. The AI knows where you are, who you’re with, what you’re doing. It detects when you’re approaching restricted areas, associating with prohibited contacts, or exhibiting patterns that historically preceded reoffending. Interventions range from automated warnings to immediate alerts to human supervisors to deployment of response teams if necessary.
Keep in mind this isn’t more humane because it respects freedom—it doesn’t. It’s more effective because it allows people to maintain the employment, relationships, and stability that prevent reoffending while still ensuring public safety. Someone who stole cars can work, support their family, and maintain normal life under constant surveillance that makes further theft nearly impossible.
The privacy violations are profound. The alternative—years in a cage—is arguably worse.
Restorative Justice: Making Victims Whole Instead of Making Criminals Suffer
The third shift moves from retribution to restoration. Instead of asking “how much should this person suffer for what they did,” courts increasingly ask “how can we make the victim whole and prevent this from happening again?”
For many crimes, this means perpetrators work—under supervision—to directly compensate victims through labor, payment, or service. Someone who vandalized property spends months repairing it and similar damage throughout the community. Someone who committed fraud works to repay victims while receiving financial literacy training to address the thinking that led to crime. Someone who assaulted another person provides compensation while undergoing anger management and conflict resolution therapy.
This seems soft until you realize victims often care more about restitution than retribution. They want to be made whole, to have their losses compensated, to know the perpetrator understands the harm caused. Watching someone rot in prison provides none of that. Receiving meaningful compensation while knowing the perpetrator is actually changing addresses real needs rather than just satisfying abstract notions of justice.
Virtual Confinement: Punishment Without Physical Space
For crimes where public safety genuinely requires separation, we’ll develop virtual confinement that restricts freedom without physical cages. Imagine house arrest combined with virtual reality mandates—your physical movement is restricted to approved locations, but you spend required hours in VR environments designed for rehabilitation, education, therapy, or labor.
You’re confined but not caged. Isolated but not warehoused. Punished but not brutalized. The suffering is in restricted freedom, not in subjecting humans to environments that make them worse.
Final Thoughts
Future generations will judge us harshly for incarceration, not because they’re soft on crime but because they’ll have alternatives that actually work. Neurological intervention that fixes dysfunctional patterns. Monitored freedom that maintains stability while ensuring safety. Restorative justice that helps victims rather than just punishing perpetrators. Virtual confinement that restricts without degrading.
These alternatives aren’t necessarily more humane in ways we currently value—some involve profound invasions of privacy and autonomy. But they’re more effective at actually reducing crime, helping victims, and addressing root causes rather than just warehousing people and pretending it accomplishes anything beyond satisfying our desire for vengeance.
After all, when future generations ask “why did you lock people in cages and expect that to make them better,” we won’t have good answers. We’ll just have the historical record of a system so obviously counterproductive that continuing it will seem less like criminal justice and more like society-wide insanity we somehow convinced ourselves was normal.
Related Articles:
When AI Starts Arresting You for Crimes You Haven’t Committed Yet
Building a More Valuable Human: Why Your Life Is Worth $2 Billion (And Rising)
The Great Fracturing: How AI Is Systematically Splitting Society Into Incompatible Realities
