"There are dozens of these ideas floating around. And the thing about them is that none of them is actually evil, they’re only sinister if you see them in one particular direction. Imagine that instead of prison you could resocialise someone, put them in a human environment and yet protect that environment from their lapses. Occupational therapy, impulse control, an awareness of place and connectedness. By many readings it’s the optimal reform environment—the only thing it needs is a positive context to grow in, a place where people can respect you, which is much easier if they know you can’t hurt them. Recidivism rates could be slashed. Except that, I mean: hey. It’s putting control chips in people. Why not go the whole way and run a wire into a given bit of the brain, stimulate a given response directly when you need to? Pavlovian reconditioning—for medical purposes only, of course. Maybe for rapists and so on. I mean, that’s protecting society, right? It’s never just that, of course, and sooner or later you’ve got a chipped human population which is an appreciable fraction of the whole. So very, very not cool. Except that it’s so much better than just locking them up to make ashtrays. Except that it’s worse. Or is it?"