Criminals sent to prison for life-sentences, with no chance of parole, should be afforded the same opportunity to take advantage of Cryonics as any “free person” should, with specific legal stipulations;
That the prisoner cover all costs of the cryonics; from having their recently deceased bodies temporarily ‘frozen’ (See: Emergency Preparedness for a Local Cryonics Group document by Ben Best), shipped from the prison facilities, and having neuropreservation (their heads) or full bodies vitrified and stored at the cryonics facility.
Upon being brought back to life sometime in the future, the prisoner will proceed to live out the rest of their lives in the future prison.
Prison statutory reforms will need to take place within a particular state/provincial jurisdiction to cover the cost to tax payers for keeping them in prison. In the likely or unlikely event this “cryonics prisoner rights” law is repealed sometime during the patient’s cryonics freezing, upon being fully revived the prisoner will immediately be informed of said repealment. The prisoner will then be left with no other choice but to work off the rest of their days in prison making future products; linens and license plates (or equivalent) to help offset the cost of their stay.
In the future prison, overhead costs will be dramatically reduced with the introduction of machine-based guards and more automated processes; such as food distribution to prisoners (which were typically handled by humans in the 21st century). This will dramatically reduce the cost to hold the prisoner in their facilities.
Prisoners serving out life-sentences shouldn’t have the ‘freedom’ to walk free in the future. A life sentence is a life sentence.
Prisoners on death-row should not have the ability to take advantage of any cryonics services at all. The judge and jury made a lawful decision sentence the prisoner to death. Cryonics could be seen as death avoidance.
Those prisoners serving lesser sentences for lesser crimes (i.e. armed robbery, fraud) should have the freedom to pay for cryonics services. Their freedom would be granted upon the possibility that their criminal behaviors could be cured with nanotechnology, RNAi, etc. By acquiescing, the future prisoner could then walk free in the future world. Otherwise, if the technology is not readily available, this prisoner will then continue to serve out the remainder of their sentence.
Prisoners on death-row should not have the ability to take advantage of any cryonics services at all. The judge and jury made a lawful decision sentence the prisoner to death. Cryonics could be seen as death avoidance.
This only makes sense if one thinks that there’s an intrinsic good in obeying “lawful decisions” and that that good is large enough to outweigh an opportunity to prevent complete and utter information death of a sentient entity. That’s a claim that requires a lot of justification.
(On a related note, if there was a specific religion that claimed that if their burial rites are performed over a dead person, the person will one day be resurrected, would you forbid those rites to people on death row? If not, how is it different?)
Well, would we offer a prisoner on death row a one-in-a-million lottery chance to be spared the electric chair?
I doubt it—when we as a society decide a person does not deserve to live, we mean we want him to die with probability 1. Cryonics offers an unknown but non-zero probability of survival. I’m not sure how I feel about the death penalty, but someone who believes in the death penalty should not allow cryonics after execution.
This seems reasonable since we don’t assign a different punishment to those who survive botched executions.
But on the other hand people there are some people who are ok with the death penalty because they can let “God sort it out”. Believing in a immortal soul or reincarnation and then killing someone seems to me more like a forced eviction and a extreme restraining order than a annihilation.
What if there are more people like that than there are people who are against executions on primarily religious grounds (this is far from clear btw since the Roman Catholic Church, arguably the largest religious denomination on the planet, formally lobbies and preaches against it)?
Why not argue that we should allow low probability far future acquittal in the form of death followed by cryogenic preservation on the grounds that there is a reasonable doubt that we as a society are wrong about this, and will be wrong for quite some time (longer than his natural life) but not forever. If we are killing them anyway, why not let our descendants to undo our mistakes?
Criminals sent to prison for life-sentences, with no chance of parole, should be afforded the same opportunity to take advantage of Cryonics as any “free person” should, with specific legal stipulations;
That the prisoner cover all costs of the cryonics; from having their recently deceased bodies temporarily ‘frozen’ (See: Emergency Preparedness for a Local Cryonics Group document by Ben Best), shipped from the prison facilities, and having neuropreservation (their heads) or full bodies vitrified and stored at the cryonics facility.
Upon being brought back to life sometime in the future, the prisoner will proceed to live out the rest of their lives in the future prison.
Prison statutory reforms will need to take place within a particular state/provincial jurisdiction to cover the cost to tax payers for keeping them in prison. In the likely or unlikely event this “cryonics prisoner rights” law is repealed sometime during the patient’s cryonics freezing, upon being fully revived the prisoner will immediately be informed of said repealment. The prisoner will then be left with no other choice but to work off the rest of their days in prison making future products; linens and license plates (or equivalent) to help offset the cost of their stay.
In the future prison, overhead costs will be dramatically reduced with the introduction of machine-based guards and more automated processes; such as food distribution to prisoners (which were typically handled by humans in the 21st century). This will dramatically reduce the cost to hold the prisoner in their facilities.
Prisoners serving out life-sentences shouldn’t have the ‘freedom’ to walk free in the future. A life sentence is a life sentence.
Prisoners on death-row should not have the ability to take advantage of any cryonics services at all. The judge and jury made a lawful decision sentence the prisoner to death. Cryonics could be seen as death avoidance.
Those prisoners serving lesser sentences for lesser crimes (i.e. armed robbery, fraud) should have the freedom to pay for cryonics services. Their freedom would be granted upon the possibility that their criminal behaviors could be cured with nanotechnology, RNAi, etc. By acquiescing, the future prisoner could then walk free in the future world. Otherwise, if the technology is not readily available, this prisoner will then continue to serve out the remainder of their sentence.
Nathan Wosnack
This only makes sense if one thinks that there’s an intrinsic good in obeying “lawful decisions” and that that good is large enough to outweigh an opportunity to prevent complete and utter information death of a sentient entity. That’s a claim that requires a lot of justification.
(On a related note, if there was a specific religion that claimed that if their burial rites are performed over a dead person, the person will one day be resurrected, would you forbid those rites to people on death row? If not, how is it different?)
Well, would we offer a prisoner on death row a one-in-a-million lottery chance to be spared the electric chair?
I doubt it—when we as a society decide a person does not deserve to live, we mean we want him to die with probability 1. Cryonics offers an unknown but non-zero probability of survival. I’m not sure how I feel about the death penalty, but someone who believes in the death penalty should not allow cryonics after execution.
This seems reasonable since we don’t assign a different punishment to those who survive botched executions.
But on the other hand people there are some people who are ok with the death penalty because they can let “God sort it out”. Believing in a immortal soul or reincarnation and then killing someone seems to me more like a forced eviction and a extreme restraining order than a annihilation.
What if there are more people like that than there are people who are against executions on primarily religious grounds (this is far from clear btw since the Roman Catholic Church, arguably the largest religious denomination on the planet, formally lobbies and preaches against it)?
Why not argue that we should allow low probability far future acquittal in the form of death followed by cryogenic preservation on the grounds that there is a reasonable doubt that we as a society are wrong about this, and will be wrong for quite some time (longer than his natural life) but not forever. If we are killing them anyway, why not let our descendants to undo our mistakes?