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At first, Anderton holds an absolute belief in the necessity of Precrime as a societal good. When explaining Precrime to Witwer he admits that those arrested under the Precrime system in a sense are innocent, but he still believes in the system. However, when he’s in danger of losing his own liberty, Anderton’s belief that social safety is more important than individual freedom is shaken. Whereas previously he asserted that Precrime makes society safer and so it was fine to imprison innocent people, now that Precrime has threatened his own safety, he says to Lisa that a system that could imprison an innocent person doesn’t deserve to exist.
The revelation that Kaplan has been manipulating his paranoia the entire time causes Anderton to dismiss all the complexities within the Precrime system he’s identified. By killing Kaplan, he both enacts his free will and robs himself of it. Given Kaplan’s evil intentions, it’s possible to read Anderton’s choice as a selfless act of heroism. However, the larger picture of Precrime, where at times a majority report is just an illusion, suggests his heroic intentions come at the cost of deluding himself as to the system's problems.
Notably, Anderton begins the story in a paranoid frame of mind, even before his name appears on the prediction slip. Just seeing Witwer, whom he knows will someday replace him, makes him feel old, and feeling his age causes him to expect the worst of Witwer because he’s not ready to give up his job. His later assumption that Lisa is conspiring with Witwer hints at sexual jealousy. Kaplan’s entire scheme not only relies on manipulating Anderton’s fears, but arises from Kaplan having similar feelings himself. Kaplan’s military justice was replaced by Precrime as the new, exciting model of policing, leaving Kaplan without power or purpose. Anderton’s terror over being replaced hints at the deeply utilitarian logic underlying society. People with intellectual disabilities are trained to become precogs at the expense of any other mental function. People predicted to be criminals are placed in a nebulous detention camp, removed from the general population. In a society operating on this logic, Anderton sees aging not as a natural part of life, but as becoming obsolete and therefore disposable.
