Can they just sort out the housing price and cost of living so we're not forced to break the law to survive and get their thousand year sentence? Or nah?

There's a Black Mirror episode about that!

I know it’s a shitpost, but the idea behind something like this is counter to the point of rehabilitation. Civilization should move towards rehabilitation instead of punishment as the idea is that you want to integrate someone back into society. I am not sure inducing trauma and mental damage is conducive to rehabilitation.

Not only that would be super cruel, it would also be pretty stupid, because how are you supposed to rehabilitate someone by basically just torturing them? And also, one of the good sides of prisons is keeping dangerous people away from their (potential) victims. Imagine if someone tried to murder you, went to jail, and then they got back out in 8 hours.

In my experience, the best way to make 8 hours feel like a thousand years is to get a job in IT.

Isn’t this just a Black Mirror episode?

Soo… since OP is a jackass, here’s the link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10697529/Prisoners-could-serve-1000-year-sentence-in-eight-hours.html

The gist (emphasis mine):

Philosopher Rebecca Roache […] said, […] “you could imagine developing a pill or a liquid that made someone feel like they were serving a 1,000-year sentence”

I can’t fathom why this is report-worthy. Was April 2014 such a boring month?

As others have said, the rehabilitation aspect is dubious. It depends on what the person "experiences" for that length of time. If there's therapy in time-dilation-space then sure go right ahead and sign me up as well. I'll just Goku-it up in my chamber of time and space and work some shit out in time for my morning shit. But you and I both know it ain't going to work that way. Prisoners will just be trapped in an empty void with only their own thoughts to keep them company, most likely rendering them insane. An infinite solitary confinement is just plain torture.

Edit: so I googled the article and its laughable how easily the author slides right in to dystopian fanfic. "This would, obviously, be much cheaper for the taxpayer than extending criminals’ lifespans to enable them to serve 1,000 years in real time." Obviously.

Don't Create the Torment Nexus.

Naturally, this is the type of thing in sci-fi where we assume it'll be used to generate massive amounts of income to benefit society in a magnificently short amount of time, and then some bastard comes around and says, "What if we incarcerate people for millenia?"

This just sounds like straight up torture with extra steps.

No rehabilitation, no isolation of dangerous individuals from the general population. I'm decidedly anti-incarceration but at least there are arguments for it in place of something functional and just.

This just doesn't solve any problems and adds some new ones. It sounds unbelievably cruel.

DS9 already did it.

I want that so much, get 10 university degrees, learn to play the guitar, become a master craftsman, all in a day.

Who is researching this topic without losing sleep, and who reports on this crap in such a blasé manner lol.

There's a whole horrifying episode of Deep Space Nine about something like this.

I have my doubts this is a technology even close to being achieved or that anyone would be interested in funding it.

That's one way to mind break somebody into becoming a slave with no willpower to fight back

Nice so instead of locking somebody up for 20 years for murder, we can make it feel closer to 22 million years.

That'll fucking teach 'em!

You're not supposed to take every single piece of star trek tech and make.it a Reality and hurry up with my replicator, I'm sick of buying food.

You are not getting rehabilitated if you have to experience The Jaunt.

Showing my age here, but there's a great Improvised Star Trek episode about this exact topic, if you like improv: Time & Punishment 🤣