If you could live in a world where criminals could be apprehended before they even committed a crime, would you? This is the central premise of Psycho-Pass, a new anime written for television and airing in time with the Japanese release all over the world thanks to Funimation.
It is the near future and most crime has been eradicated from Japan. Scientists have discovered a way to accurately measure the probability that someone will commit a crime. This figure is the Crime Coefficient and it is monitored at all times by the Sibyl System. The way to keep a low Crime Coefficient is to receive regular therapy and work on managing your stress levels. Trials and courts are no longer needed as the Sibyl System controls the law, regulation, prevention, treatment, and punishment.
When the Crime Coefficients get too high or a person actually commits a crime, the Public Safety Bureau's Criminal Investigation Unit is dispatched to the scene. These units consist of very intelligent law-abiding citizens, Inspectors, and incurable but highly stable latent criminals, Enforcers. They are equipped with a combination stun/ammunition gun, a Dominator, that confirms the Crime Coefficient before unlocking to subdue an individual engaging or about to engage in a crime.
Psycho-Pass presents an interesting world from the perspective of Unit One of Public Safety Bureau's Criminal Investigation Unit. Akane Tsunemori is a recent graduate who scored so high on her career exams that she could choose any career she wanted. She chooses to be an Inspector because she was the only student in her class to pass the Public Safety Bureau's standards. She is put in charge of the Enforcers Shinya Kogami, a former Inspector, and Shusei Kagari, a young man who grew up with a high Crime Coefficient. The trio are sent out to investigate crime scenes and apprehend latent and active criminals.
Psycho-Pass could have been a standard procedural show with a sci-fi twist. Instead, writer Gen Urobuchi (Fate/Zero) uses the form of the procedural as a critique of the criminal justice system. We obviously live in a world where trials and police work define justice. Deterring crime and apprehending criminals on lesser violations before they have the chance to do something more destructive is a big part of this job. But if deterrence and early detection alone became the main focus of the legal system, how could we be sure that we're actually apprehending and punishing real threats?
In the first episode of Psycho-Pass, a woman is kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a criminal. The investigators know the assailant is a huge risk because of his high Crime Coefficient and his track record of bad behavior. However, when they finally find the man in a labyrinth of abandoned apartment buildings, his victim is already registering a high Crime Coefficient. The stress of being attacked put her in a terrible mindset that falsely identifies her a being more dangerous than the man who raped her. Akane, on her first day as an Investigator, makes the choice to directly disobey orders and subdue Shinya before he exterminates the victim for having a dangerous Crime Coefficient. Akane is able to calm the the victim down enough to get her out of the lethal Dominator range and take her in for emergency rehabilitation.
The show spends a few episodes defining the morality of the characters and the limits of the centralized and omnipresent Sibyl System for detecting crime. You find out there are blind spots in many public places, businesses and schools don't have to submit themselves to the constant Crime Coefficient scanning, and some people don't even register on the scale at all. If the only way to regulate crime is the Sibyl System and the Sibyl System is far from perfect, how can you trust the alpha and omega of crime enforcement to actually protect society?
The genius of Psycho-Pass is how this context is established. The first five episodes are there just to introduce you to the how and why of the world. From there, the longer narrative emerges. A criminal mastermind who doesn't register at all on the Sibyl System is encouraging latent criminals to commit very public acts of violence and mayhem to take down the entire legal system. When one protege is caught, another is brought in to do even worse things. His goal is to wake society up to the flaws of the Sibyl System.
In Psycho-Pass, there are no obvious right or wrong answers to justiceMeanwhile, Akane is constantly put at odds with her own team of Enforcers and Nobuchika Ginoza, the senior Investigator in Unit One. She is told on her first day that the rules don't matter as much as the results and the theory of why using Crime Coefficients to help society means nothing when you pursue actual criminals. Akane rejects the premise outright and insists on doing as much investigation into crimes and latent criminals as possible. This means actually letting the Enforcers try very risky strategies to lure out offenders and refusing to rely on lethal action even if it means letting the criminal escape.
Psycho-Pass is the push and pull of modernizing criminal justice. No one is entirely right and wrong in their theories about the role of the Sybil System in law enforcement. There are obvious wrong-doers--murderers, rapists, violent thieves--but they are far out-weighed by what looks like regular people having a bad day. Can you really sentence someone to jail and rehabilitation because they lost their job or got in an argument with a loved one before going outside? And how much of a role does mental health play in determining actual criminal risk? Is a person with anxiety more likely to commit a crime because of their illness than a victim of bullying who is fine so long as he's nowhere near his abusers?
Psycho-Pass is a constantly evolving communique on evaluating right and wrong versus legal and illegal in modern society. If a criminal thinks he's doing the right thing by committing a crime, they might go undetected for years or even life because his crime has no impact on their psyche. But a regular person who makes one bad choice and knows it is wrong could be sentenced to death for a momentary lapse of judgement. These are the extreme ends of the spectrum of justice and morality in Psycho-Pass, but they are the forces that drive the tension and interest of the series.
Have you checked out Psycho-Pass yet? It's streaming on Hulu with new episodes coming out on Thursday nights. What do you think? Sound off below.