Precrime vs. Thoughtcrime

In the film “Minority Report”, there is a government department that catches murders and other criminals before they go through with their acts. This government department is called “The Department of Precrime”. “Pre-cogs” are the people who see the future and are able to tell the government when a crime will be committed. Having that information, a squad from the department goes and stops the crime before it is committed. This is very similar to the Though Police who arrest people for committing thoughtcrimes or the Junior Spies who rat out their parents accused of committing thoughtcrime. The whole concept behind the Department of Precrime is to rid the Earth of crimes and murders. However, by stopping the person who is supposedly going to commit a murder or a crime, the crime hasn’t happened yet. Isn’t it the action that makes a crime illegal, not just the thought of it? The same holds true in 1984. Winston, along with many others are accused of thoughtcrime, however, thoughtcrime is only a thought against the government, not an action against it. These people are being tortured because they had thoughts that were against the government. It was their thoughts instead of their actions that got them arrested. In “Minority Report” the man was arrested before he killed his wife. Therefore, he was arrested for the thought instead of the action since he was stopped before he could go through with it. The one difference that I noticed between the agencies is that fact that in 1984 the government had no way of knowing whether people were going to act on their thoughts. In “Minority Report”, the Department of Precrime knew that the criminal was going to commit and crime and just stopped them before they could hurt anyone.