by Tom Schiavon

Created on: February 09, 2009

If it is possible to show that a criminal can be successfully brainwashed into not doing a criminal activity again, then perhaps it would be a legitimate thing to do. However, I don't think that successful brainwashing is something that could be reproduced with any amount of consistency. The human mind is an incredibly resilient thing, and to think that someone who knows that they are being brainwashed would allow themselves to have this done to them is probably unrealistic. It would seem to go against the very definition of brainwashing to attempt to do it to someone who is aware of the process. Brainwashing requires a person to be unaware of the process. In addition, it would seem that this would require intensive in-patient psychological treatment overseen by trained clinicians, which would result in an enormous cost. Assuming that here would be a screening process that would decide who would qualify for such a treatment, as well as the development of diagnostic tools to determine the qualifications for such a subject, the overhead costs would be enormous just to get the program off of the ground, much less operate it for any length of time. Being an extremely speculative field it would be difficult to find funds for it in the first place, as well as trained "brainwashers" who have the qualifications to do such a thing (I'm not of any schools where one may go to get a brainwashing emphasis in their clinical work). There are also ethical difficulties that would be encountered. In order to brainwash, there has to be a recognizable goal in mind. Who would decide what exactly this would be? A group of ethicists would have to create what they believe to be an appropriate type of person to be a part of society. A curriculum would then have to be developed for each individual to make them less of who they are and more uniform to what the consensus of the ideal human citizen is. Would then end result be the creation of a class of people who are only able to think in a certain way? As with any such experiment, the projected success may be a false hope, and in the end society might end up with a population of brainwashed criminals whose behavior is unpredictable, yet worse, than it was in the beginning,

The whole scenario is actually a frightening proposition that resembles the plot line to a science fiction movie. The master race finds a way to control and manipulate a certain class of people until they become robotic, only to have one subject escape and wreak havoc on society.

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