Preventive Detention and the Erosion of Civil Liberties in The Dream Hotel

The Thematic Claim: Prediction as Punishment, Precaution as Prisoner's Dilemma, and the Architecture of Indefinite Detention in The Dream Hotel In The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami constructs a near-future America where the state detains citizens not for crimes committed but for crimes predicted. The novel's thematic claim is precise: preventive detention, justified as a public-safety measure, does not merely risk eroding civil liberties—it systematically dismantles them by replacing evidence with algorithmic inference, due process with administrative discretion, and finite punishment with indefinite