Prison full of clones

I'm finally getting around to developing an idea my Dad and I came up with about 6 years ago into an actual story. Basically, it involves a way to actually enforce multiple life sentences for a single individual: clone them for each successive sentence after they die. The plan is to follow the life of the 6th or 7th clone, who is so far removed from the actual criminal that the crime in question has been lost to the proverbial mists of time. As far as I know, this premise has yet to be explored in full, but I would like to know if it has at least been touched on by either my fellow tropers' own writing endeavors or by some Sci-fi writers and filmmakers.

As far as time period, I'm placing it no earlier than the year 3000 AD. And at this stage, I'm planning on using BSG-type FTL travel in my setting.

edited 6th Sep '12 1:29:54 PM by HumanTorch2

I haven't heard of anything like that...

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

I'd be interested in what kind of society you envision doing this. Reminds me of medieval cultures on earth where whole families would be held responsible for the actions of individual members.

Each Clone would be a different person, close to an identical twin than anything else.

I'd be really pissed if I was in prison for life for something that I didn't even do.

Which type of cloning is This? The ordinary real-world kind, which gives you the equivalent of a fertilized egg, or the fancy Sci-Fi kind which involves somehow growing an adult body in a bathtub-sized petri dish?

If it's the former, do they use surrogate mothers or artificial wombs? And by whom and how are those babies raised until they're old enough to become self-sufficient prisoners?

If it's the latter, what level of mental development is the clone at, when they first attain consciousness? If they are infantile or blank slates, again, by whom and how are they "raised"?

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

Good points Kass. The clones in question are what you called the "realistic" ones. Basically Boba Fett-type rather than the ones from Michael Bay's "The Island". And artificial wombs are the plan for now, but that could change to fit any alterations to the setting, since I'm just in the early planning stages at this point. Development, both mental and physical, would be normal. They would grow up just like a normal human, with all that entails. As for who raises them, that would be the, mostly, benevolent guards.

As for Mc Kitten's question, The prison will be under control of a Unified World Government on Earth, with honor and practicality as their hat. Sort of like the Klingons, but not as extreme. Whether it will actually be on Earth or just Alcatraz IN SPACE is undecided as of yet.

edited 6th Sep '12 1:14:11 PM by HumanTorch2

Alright, so they are fully self-aware individual persons distinct from their donors, as opposed to some braintaping vehicle used to continue conciousness of the original. Then the big question for me would be: why? Seem like a huge waste of time and resources, with beyond questionable ethics and no benefit to be gained from. So what justification do they have to do it? I'm not saying it's a problem, countries have done worse things, although i guess that depends on the number of clones, and weirder things, but it is dissonant enough that it requires an explanation.

Hmmm. Ordinarily, I can't imagine a human guard remaining emotionally uninvolved with someone they raised in loco parentis, nor that even a stereotypically ignorant bureaucrat in charge of the system wouldn't expect that to happen.

If you want your setting to be plausible and have the usual prison tropes associated with it, rather than turn it into an only slightly weird kind of integrated/isolated community, you'd have to address that directly.

The first two ideas that popped into my head were "robot guards" and "tours of duty limited to one year or so", in that order, FWIW.

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

Oh, also - why make one clone at a time and have them serve the sentences consecutively, rather than make as many clones as necessary straight away and have them serve the sentences concurrently? Seems more efficient, and isn't really any more morally questionably than the former version, no?

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

There has to be some suspension of disbelief that anyone thinks that punishing the clone of a criminal means anything to the criminal.

The main idea behind my premise, which I probably could have explained better in the opening post, is a deconstruction of some arguments against the death penalty, as well as showing how ludicrous the concept of multiple life sentences actually is. Having all of the clones be contemporaries of one another pretty much undermines all of that. Does that help any?

Oh, and good idea with the robot guards, Kass. That hadn't occurred to me.

Honestly? I still don't really see it (or the relation to the death penalty). Can you explain in more detail or do you want to keep that for the story?

I don't really see it, either. The concurrent and consecutive implementations of the scheme seem equally ludicrous to me. But, not knowing the details of where you're going with this, there may well be something missing in the former that's present in the latter, anyway. I just wanted to make sure you had considered both, really.

Soon the Cold One took flight, yielded Goddess and field to the victor: The Lord of the Light.

Well, what it sorta reminds me of is "customs" in ancient europe and china where sentences could lead to the executions of whole families, several generations even. (generations meaning "generations removed", i.e. even cousins. You obviously couldn't execute future generations, or dead ancestors) But that makes sense in a brutal way, i.e. "leave none to seek revenge" as well as getting rid of anyone even potentially connected to the crime and criminal. Usually only done with traitors (~ families) anyway. But a civilization which can create clones is quite obviously of a higher level, and besides i just don't see the point of purposely creating clones just to put them in prison. (nor where it ties in with the death penalty, which is sorta like the opposite)

This just doesn't sound believable to me. Unless everyone in charge was completely insane, no one would consider a clone to be the same person.

edited 9th Sep '12 4:24:21 PM by RTaco

Mc Kitten, I know that cloning, say, a serial killer multiple times solely to place said clones in prison for their entire lives is is the opposite of the death penalty. That's the point to my story: to show why execution is the better option through deconstruction of the alternatives, especially multiple life sentences passed upon someone who has only one life anyway.

And Taco, there is precedent for completely insane rulers, politicians, and the like. Take Hitler for example.

Yes, but this is attempting a strawman and failing whenever somebody thinks "The clone is not the original" invalidating the entire premise. Really, it would make more sense if you turned the criminals immortal and locked them in hell.

Yeah, sorry, but this makes no sense at all. A clone is basically a much younger identical twin, and only the most bizarre mental gymnastics (or possibly unusual religious beliefs) could justify treating them as the same person.

This is not a 'deconstruction of the alternatives to the death penalty'. It's completely unrelated.

Be not afraid...

I'm gonna agree. It's an interesting premise, the kind of weird-ass plot point Philip K. Dick would be proud of, but it kind of fails if it's meant to be a convincing argument in Real Life discussions.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

But you're not doing that, you're passing multiple life sentences onto different people who had no connection to the crime. I don't think this scenario will make your point, or at least it will detract from it. I think what most people will immediately feel is wrong, is that these cloned humans are being created just so they can be punished for a crime they didn't commit, and not that it is wrong because the original criminal doesn't get punished enough. (If that's the problem you see with multiple life sentences. As far as i see that's mostly an artefact of bureaucracy, i.e. some countries put different crimes on the books for killing one person or being a mass murderer, others don't and just add up sentences for each individual murder)

Anyway, maybe you should introduce braintaping to your scenario, so that it is actually the original criminal that gets punished for several lifetimes? (Although on a side note, if immortality is in principle possible that way, it better be available to the population as whole or you'll have a lot of angry old people )

edited 10th Sep '12 3:29:28 AM by McKitten

Yeah, the clones of the criminal should have their mind duplicated too, otherwise it's like putting identical twins into prison when only one of them did something wrong.

"Steel wins battles. Gold wins wars."

@Jimmy

But that leads to more issues. If you transfer the memories of a criminal into a copy of their body, are they the same person? Do the memories make the man?

More than the DNA does.

Maybe it's because of seeing Prometheus, but the idea that you dream in hypersleep at normal speed, but aren't aging at all, could be used for this.

You have a prison of popsicles, and have them all "live" through the real time equivalent of multiple life sentences in a simulated prison. The banality of simulating a prison when you can have it be an Ironic Hell, or a scenario designed to reform the criminal would be disgusting. And the prisoners would know it, because they'd spend centuries in there with no one and nothing but each other and just barely smart AI's for company (real AI's wouldn't be put on prison duty for it being inhumAIne).

And unlike movies like Demolition Man, once they get out they have no skills or even news of the outside to fall back on.

A prison facility for clones, huh? This will end well.

What's precedent ever done for us?