Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Season 1 Episode 8
Episode: "Justice"
The Enterprise has arrived at Rubicun III with the intention of giving the crew an opportunity to take shore leave. Rubicun III is a vast garden-like planet filled with parks, open spaces and a youthful population, the Edo who dress appropriately for their sunny climes; they are also very huggy, kissey and whatever else you care to think of. The Edo have also enjoyed a long lasting peace, which they attribute to the enforcement of all laws with the threat of a single punishment for any crime; that punishment being death (of course!). Well despite the introductory away team consisting of a manageable half a dozen crewmembers, it's pretty much a ticking timebomb event which sees young Wesley Crusher playing ball before accidentally falling into a planter filled with new plants. - Enter the death penalty!
And that's before we even get to talk about the Edo's God, an advanced intelligence that keeps an everpresent watch over the planet's population from orbit and who are completely aware of what's transpiring down on the surface.
Captain Picard beams down to the planet to open negotiations with a pair of community leaders for the Edo to discuss Wesley's "crime". In this scene the point is made that by the 24th century humans have ceased practicing capital punishment.
Picard also makes a reference to the idea that on Earth by the 24th century, the "seeds" of criminal behaviour have been identified, which is a point that was a little vague to me when I was ten but as an adult (and one who has thought a lot about this sort of stuff) I've come to realise is a point that is actually pretty much spot on. Nobody is born with pre-programmed ambitions of being a criminal; for humans absent a brain disorder those behaviours are learned, nurtured by a system that underperforms and therefore underserves its citizens, compounded further by an upbringing with far too few socially conscious value forming influences (positive role models). A system that by its design invites differentials. A system that is incapable of shaking off poverty, undrprivilege and has at the end of the day demonstrated over the centuries of its application that it is completely ineffective at firebraking the social conditions that turn those who would otherwise have been civilised into being the exact opposite. - You implement the design of a social order that sees the system in service to ALL its citizens instead of the citizens in service to their system, then the pressures on a population would only reduce; society's focus could be shifted to say... repairing the human condition to a state significantly more positive than what we have today. Civilisation, perhaps to the point where crime rates plummet through the floor and the vast library of punishments that the current system has at its disposal are actually disposed of, their relevance having been reduced to extinction; capital punishment probably being one of the first penalties to disappear!
Season 1 Episode 8
Episode: "Justice"
The Enterprise has arrived at Rubicun III with the intention of giving the crew an opportunity to take shore leave. Rubicun III is a vast garden-like planet filled with parks, open spaces and a youthful population, the Edo who dress appropriately for their sunny climes; they are also very huggy, kissey and whatever else you care to think of. The Edo have also enjoyed a long lasting peace, which they attribute to the enforcement of all laws with the threat of a single punishment for any crime; that punishment being death (of course!). Well despite the introductory away team consisting of a manageable half a dozen crewmembers, it's pretty much a ticking timebomb event which sees young Wesley Crusher playing ball before accidentally falling into a planter filled with new plants. - Enter the death penalty!
And that's before we even get to talk about the Edo's God, an advanced intelligence that keeps an everpresent watch over the planet's population from orbit and who are completely aware of what's transpiring down on the surface.
Captain Picard beams down to the planet to open negotiations with a pair of community leaders for the Edo to discuss Wesley's "crime". In this scene the point is made that by the 24th century humans have ceased practicing capital punishment.
Picard also makes a reference to the idea that on Earth by the 24th century, the "seeds" of criminal behaviour have been identified, which is a point that was a little vague to me when I was ten but as an adult (and one who has thought a lot about this sort of stuff) I've come to realise is a point that is actually pretty much spot on. Nobody is born with pre-programmed ambitions of being a criminal; for humans absent a brain disorder those behaviours are learned, nurtured by a system that underperforms and therefore underserves its citizens, compounded further by an upbringing with far too few socially conscious value forming influences (positive role models). A system that by its design invites differentials. A system that is incapable of shaking off poverty, undrprivilege and has at the end of the day demonstrated over the centuries of its application that it is completely ineffective at firebraking the social conditions that turn those who would otherwise have been civilised into being the exact opposite. - You implement the design of a social order that sees the system in service to ALL its citizens instead of the citizens in service to their system, then the pressures on a population would only reduce; society's focus could be shifted to say... repairing the human condition to a state significantly more positive than what we have today. Civilisation, perhaps to the point where crime rates plummet through the floor and the vast library of punishments that the current system has at its disposal are actually disposed of, their relevance having been reduced to extinction; capital punishment probably being one of the first penalties to disappear!
