Sep
16
Cops on Mars: Lookin’ for Law in Non-Normal Spaces
“If we are going to imagine a Mars P.D., then it is imperative that we also imagine that police department’s potential flaws.”
All sorts of people (e.g., Elon Musk, Newt Gingrich) are excited about colonies on the Moon and Mars, planning and talking about the realization of such plans in (possibly) the next few decades, along with the scientific, economic, and defensive benefits thereof. Heck, I’m excited, too, though I’m a bit less optimistic about the timetable.
Discussions about Lunar and Martian settlements usually revolve around air, water, food, habitats, power generation, various supplies, etc. But, what about crime? The initial colonists will likely be small groups of scientists, and as long as they are well-vetted and well-behaved, crime probably won’t be much of an issue. But, eventually populations will rise, with a wider variety of people and their children, and the opportunities and probabilities for criminal activity will increase with them.
In a new article in The Atlantic, Geoff Manaugh proposes a scenario in which three generations of Martian settlers live and work in “villages, farms, industrial plants, scientific labs, whole cities”. He asks,
“What criminal possibilities will emerge in this scenario? Who will be tasked with tracking down vandals, thieves, and saboteurs, let alone rapists and serial murderers? … We can design a Mars Police Department before we get there, knowing that we’ll need its investigatory and carceral powers to help keep human settlers safe.”
Manaugh talked with UC-Davis’s Christyann Darwent, an archaeologist who does fieldwork in the Canadian High Arctic, and they had an interesting discussion about forensic and crime-scene analysis:
“In the dry, freezer-like air and extreme solar exposure of Mars, DNA will age differently than it does on Earth. Blood from blunt-trauma and stab wounds will produce dramatically new spatter patterns in the planet’s low gravity. Electrostatic charge will give a new kind of evidentiary value to dust found clinging to the exteriors of space suits and nearby surfaces. Even radiocarbon dating will be different on Mars, Darwent reminded me, due to the planet’s atmospheric chemistry, making it difficult to date older crime scenes.
The Martian environment itself is also already so lethal that even a violent murder could be disguised as a natural act. Darwent suggested that a would-be murderer on the Red Planet could use the environment’s ambient lethality to her advantage. A fatal poisoning could be staged to seem as if the victim simply died of exposure to abrasive chemicals, known as perchlorates, in the Martian rocks. A weak seal on a space suit, or an oxygen meter that appears to have failed but was actually tampered with, could really be a clever homicide hiding in plain sight.”
So, who might enforce the laws and make these investigations?
“[A]n initial American police force on Mars might actually function as an extension of the U.S. Marshals Service. The Marshals are deputies of the U.S. court system and have served overseas as attachés to U.S. consular courts. Because space law is prosecuted, at least for now, by the International Courts of Justice, this suggests that the Marshals could perform an interplanetary role, enforcing the Courts’ jurisdiction. Like the FBI, the Marshals have also been to Antarctica — indeed, the Marshals have technically been to space.”
Generally, “your jurisdiction follows you up.” However, it gets tricky when you have representatives from multiple governments, agencies, and corporations involved. What if you have a suspect or victim who is an American consultant working for a subsidiary of a Japanese firm based in the UK?
“[J]urisdictions in space can also be contracted in advance, effectively agreeing ahead of time which nations’ laws will apply to a certain mission or even to a particular astronaut. It’s also possible that law enforcement on the Red Planet could take the form of corporate security contractors beholden to no terrestrial nation-state.”
Another issue is that of gunfire and other forms of combat. The dangers are higher even than normal, when one lives and works in delicately-balanced environments surrounded by deadly vacuum.
“Imagine a criminal armed with a knife has been cornered on a Martian research base, near a critical airlock leading outside. If police fire a gun or even a Taser, they risk damaging key components of the base itself, endangering potentially thousands of innocent bystanders. Other forms of hand-to-hand combat learned on Earth might have adverse effects; even a simple punch could send both the criminal and the cop flying apart as they collide in the reduced Martian gravity. How can police overpower the fugitive without making things worse for everyone?”
Josh Gold — 4th dan aikido instructor, bodily kinematics expert, and self-professed sci-fi nerd — heads a “cross-functional team” developing the world’s first martial art for space, borrowing techniques from different martial arts and non-combat sports that might be adapted for use in a zero or low-G environment.
““From a law-enforcement or security perspective,” Gold explained, “a lot of our best practices fundamentally break down in zero-G and there are significant implications for them in low-G, as well, for environments like Mars and the moon. Most of our fundamental movement tactics need to be completely revisited.” This includes whether or not we will arm police with guns. On Mars, Gold said, the risks of a missed shot are simply too great, potentially puncturing the wall of a pressurized base. Martian cops will instead need to be armed with hooks, knots, and adhesives, he suggested, not bullets, and this only emphasizes the importance of hand-to-hand self-defense….
“It’s clear that there is a need for this,” Gold emphasized. “If we want to become an off-world species, then we’re going to have to understand how to keep the peace.””
Political theorist and astrobiologist Charles Cockell has a few things to say, as well. He points out a mix of existential, psychological, and onsite political issues to be concerned about.
““An extraterrestrial society focused solely on practical objectives with no recourse to a higher purpose,” he warns in The Meaning of Liberty Beyond Earth, “will surely drive its inhabitants to despair and hopelessness as ultimately they begin to question their purpose, their humanity and any meaning in their lives.” …
In the precarious Martian environment, where so much depends on the efficient, seamless operation of life-support systems, sabotage becomes an existential threat. A saboteur might tamper with the oxygen generators or fatally disable a settlement’s most crucial airlock. When human life is so thoroughly entwined with its technical environment, we should not consider these sorts of acts mere petty crimes, he explained to me. In a literal sense, they would be crimes against humanity — even, on a large enough scale, attempted genocide….
[T]he constant presence of nearly instant environmental lethality will encourage systems of strong social control with little tolerance for error. Orders and procedures will need to be followed exactly as designed, because the consequences of a single misstep could be catastrophic. What’s more, the power to generate and distribute something as basic as oxygen will give what Cockell called “levers of control” to specific, corruptible individuals.”
Given the seriousness of some of the potential crimes, Cockell sees the eventual need for an “Extraterrestrial Containment Facility” (aka “Exoconfac”), but he also warns against the possibility of tyranny.
“[I]n a low-oxygen environment such as a prison on Mars, wardens might be tempted to use depressurization as a tactic for compliance. Authority figures could withhold air to make prisoners more pliable — or residents of an entire city more easily cowed. For Cockell, politically motivated depressurization should be made literally, physically impossible — that is, prisons in space should be designed so that air-pressure abuse simply cannot occur.”
Grow more plants!
While Manaugh ends his article with some things that seem somewhat off-topic and only present for politically-correct purposes (e.g., “racist” technology), the rest of it is quite intriguing and worth reading and thinking about.
