Thanks for your contributions; further discussion.

> And that is, in fact, where the technologies I discovered come from. However, technologies seen as religious in nature have traditionally been neglected by the academic social scientists. Some technologies, including the ones I have discovered, have such strong opponents that they cannot even get a fair airing on the internet or in the media. I would argue that at least some of those enemies are, themselves, criminals, and are opposed to some of the newer social technologies because those technologies would tend to close some of the "holes" in our current system that help keep many criminal operations going.

What technologies are you advocating for that don't get an airing on the internet or the media?

> My use of the term "hard core" needs some explanation. Of course that would include the types of crimes generally categorized as felonies that are very serious and destructive and almost always involve human victims. But it would also include the "drug kingpins" of the world, and other persons of that sort. These sorts of criminals seldom get apprehended because they make it a practice of acting through others. Though their intentions are vicious, they may appear to be upstanding citizens in their communities. Quite ordinarily, the financing for large criminal operations flow through persons of this type. Historic examples include the slave trade and the opium trade. These both started as "legitimate" enterprises, although obviously they were morally unsound. But even after they were made illegal, certain big financial players stayed involved. This is the kind of "hard core" criminal that the new technologies attempt to locate and isolate. You can't trace them to dead bodies. Their underlings do all that work and are in turn murdered if they talk.

I'm not sure how big a space colony would have to be before king pins become a problem. I'm sure it might but my first thoughts are that many current communities here don't have kingpins and a space colony would very likely start with a very self selected group of people. The rich, space enthusiasts, homesteaders, religious and political seperatists, some workers to support these communities. It would seem further down the road in time before scarface runs a drug empire in the little new Havana orbiting at GSO with 10,000 inhabitants to try and sell to.

> I am almost out of steam and time for this post. Let me very briefly list the technologies that would be needful:
> 1) A moral technology to establish basic agreements in a group about right and wrong. This would include what we now call "human rights."
> 2) A technology to make a person literate.
> 3) A technology to make, or keep, a person addiction-free.
> 4) A technology to rehabilitate persons who have committed crimes.
> 5) A technology to identify and isolate "hard core" criminals. There should also be a means of rehabilitation, though it is unlikely that most groups would ever trust such people to honestly reform.
>
> The people handled by technology #5 prey on the people handled by technologies 1-4. That's why all five are useful. This list only includes the most critically-needed social technologies to help a group survive. Others that serve other purposes exist or could be developed, but the focus of my post was crime, and these 5 address that subject specifically.

1) Couldn't laws and for many religious texts already fill this area?
2) Couldn't public education fill this area?
3) AA, NA and in patient treatment can go so far, developing a social technology to keep a person addiction free along with the goal of getting humans into space seems to be splitting energies. Other better informed earnest people are working on this issue now.
4) Similar to 3) some programs for therapy, education, job training, victim reconciliation, etc. exist to an underfunded degree in the current system, and others are working on this problem now.
5) Again similar to 3) people are working on this here and now on Earth, I'd think taking their techniques on how to do this would seem the best course.

Believe me I'm very much an advocate for increased funding and research into rehabilitation and alternative methods to incarceration, but without having facts on what works or doesn't work. We should only go with what we know works now in planning a colony off planet, to be adjusted with new facts of course.
Brooks