I'm working out the background on my mage/adept and I'm trying to figure out how to get some training for my Barrens kid when I realized that I took the flaw criminal SIN.

My question what do you think the procedures are for arresting someone in Shadowrun. I picture testing for magical abilities to be way up there. Makes it easier to know how to handle the perp.

So if your 14 and get busted and turn up magically active, do they send you to a special prison or do they just sell your ass to a corporate training camp to teach kids how to use their powers on the condition they sign with the corp for X years?

I'm having a had time seeing a detention center for these kids, "How many packs of cigs for that killing hands formula?". I can DEFINITLY see the corps wanting to get there greedy little hands on young magicians and bring them up to be good liddle wage mages...

What are people view on this. At least the kid isn't going to be sold to the organ bank.

At the age of fourteen, I can see the teen send to magical bootcamp for re-education.

All right, you sons of mothers. Give me ten fireballs for <insert appropiate kon/military/something like that> right now .

There are several references to arrest and police/sec force procedures across the sourcebooks. The single best (if a bit outdated) resource for it would be Lone Star, but it can sometimes be tricky to get ahold of a copy of that one.

As far as the way they treat mages, I want to say OTOH that it depends on the offense, the attitude of the mage, and primarily the attitude of the arresting party.

The captivity itself can include anything from permanent isolation to mage masks and permanent sim loops. They definitely don't let them run amok and cast spells, exchange formulae, etc.

That said, get with the GM and come up with why he was picked up, who arrested him, where they kept him, what the conditions were. There's plenty of room for creation and addition.

**edit

Butterblume's idea is kinda cool. I can definitely see a young awakened "criminal" being shipped off to a corporate "sponsored" boot-camp, where they're "kept and trained" and of course, brainwashed about how great it would be to work as a wage mage for the corp sponsor.

I'm getting ideas...

Actually, you'll want to look in SOTA 64. Pretty cool book anyways. Has a huge section on law enforcement and prison in general. Usually you get a mage mask stuck on you for a loooong time, if they don't jsut pump you full of drugs and/or cyber to kill your magical ability. Not sure how that would transfer over to a juvie facility though, since they can't really do that with a kid. I'd guess they'd mage mask him at the first sign of him benig a danger. Until then though, they may jsut consider him to weak/untrained to be a danger.

Ah, thanks fistandantilus. I completely forgot about that part of SOTA64.

-2 points from eidolon, for outdated references.

Does that mean I get karma!? I gotta go tell my GM!

No no, that's Build Points!

I imagine that sixth world juvinine bootcamps are less "give me ten pushups" and more, "the local corner concluded that the beating was not the cause of death but rather death was due to complications from a rare blood disease. The giant holes in his skull were nonfatal, honest."

Broomhandle sodomy would be the rule, not the exception.

The corps? If anything I would have thought the government would try to co-opt him for themselves rather than turning them over to one of the corps for short term profit. I don't see them letting go of such a valuable asset unless they have to.

How much of a hardened criminal is the character anyway? And more importantly, what did they get caught doing and how old were they at the time? If it wasn't too major I could see them making him a ward of the court and bundling them off to some kind of military academy to try and straighten them out, with an eye to recruiting them into the military proper afterwards once they've been educated to be an honest patriotic citizen. Even if they don't go into the military at 18 I figure they should pick up a number of useful skills along the way.

If you wanted them to go corporate, you could always have the kid let out under supervision and not liking it so they do a runner to the nearest corporate territory. Magician asking for citizenship and political assylum might be worth narking off the local government some.

Edit: And another thing that I just thought of, what happens if you're given a criminal SIN when you get convicted as a juvenile and then turn 18? As I understand it in the US you can apply to the courts to have your records sealed so they officially disappear. Does this mean the SIN then gets converted to a regular one or would you still keep the criminal one?

most likely a SIN is a SIN.

as in, when checked, the device or person doing the checking enters the SIN into a number of databas searches to see what comes back.

if it gets returns from the legal systems database of criminal records, presto you have a criminal SIN.

or atleast said SIN is on log as held by the person found guilty in doing said crime(s) thats in the database.

a real criminal SIN would be one where your SIN-less until found guilty. then they create a SIN for you just to have it on record.

remember, a SIN is a number linked to a corp or national database that holds your DNA, your fingerprints, your iris, face and anything else that could help to id you as a person.

then as you go thru life, your SIN gets entered into more and more databases, drivers licence, gun permit, life insurance, crimes comited.

so to check the validity of said SIN they not only check to see if the SIN match the holders bilological patterns. but allso see if the SIN have a historical record.

so therefor a good fake SIN will have a history. made up by the hacker as he hacks the SIN into the system, but a history non the less...

most likely, if the device doing the checking comes up with a strange pattern or similar, it will pick some event in the history and create a yes/no question out of it or something. then the operator of said device asks the SIN holder said question. if the answer is correct, the holder is probably the correct person. so make sure to memorize that SIN's history

and yes, i made most of this up on the spot, by going from what i know about the SIN's details in the books and similar systems. and allso guessing how it most likely would work.

so, if your familiar with relational databases. the SIN is that number that ties every database-entry containing said SIN together.

as for magicly enpowered punks in training? i would say they are most likely contained to whatever facility, corp or nations, depending on what juristiction (sp?) they do their crime under, that can handle their kind.

i think a mage mask will be reserved for those that have control of their powers to such a degree that they cant be matched by a resident mage or similar.

the rest will probably be managed by a combo of spirits, mundane guards and mages. that is, if spirits can perform counterspelling and similar, i dont recall...

all this while trying to turn them from punklings to good workers for the corp or nation that runs the facility.

if they are SIN-less, you may find them vanished, brainwashed and similar. with no datatrail, they dont exist. therefor its cult-style time

hell, look at those children being kidnaped to act as soldiers in african civil wars. if you get them young and isolate them from other sources of input, you can in theory make them do anything. scary thought realy, when you think of systems like the hitler youth, or a isolated muslim clergy school...

or how about how many young poor kids join a gang because a friend or relative allready is in it?

its a fine line between brainwashing and teaching, a very fine line...

IIRC SoNA mentioned that there's an area out near Salt Lake City, that the Pueblo let the Mormons run as an Anglo reservation, that's a natural mana warp since the background count is so high. Apparently some smart corp, forget which one, built a prison in the middle of the warp to hold magically active prisoners. So since magically active prisoners are such a small minority it might just be cost neutral to pay these guys to hold them for you rather than go through the rigmarole of having to do it yourself.

but magic is very much more personal power related then a gun.
most often, the only thing that can counter a magic user is another magic user (or a high powered magical entity).

allso, magic is much more rare then a gun. and we are talking about kids here, not hardend criminals with a rap sheet the thickness of a law book.

therefor, they can be a potential asset. so have them run around and learning to control their powers while at the same time turn them from punks to resources

if all else fails, strip them of the magic. do scortching rules exist in street magic?

Rather than a cranial bomb you'd be better off just having them as bracelets or anklets that act as location transmitters and souped up tasers that you can activate automatically or by remote.

If you do go with the cranial bomb option I'd offer it's better to simply put it somewhere in their abdomen than the brain, sited next to the spine or a major blood vessel. Lot less dicey than screwing round with the brain and can probably be done by keyhole surgery under local anaesthesia and wrapped up with a couple stitches. I figure it'd be an easier and cheaper method.

But personally I just find the whole idea of planting explosive devices in prisoners to be a little too unrealistic for my tastes. A tracking device so you can monitor their movements sure, but not explosives. The lawyers would be all over that in a national prison system. Corporate states are another matter though.

Cranial bombs don't actually mess with the brain. They're less invasive than a datajack and they cost 0 essence. Plus, exploding heads make a nice visual.

I would also imagine that some police corps would go the Cyber City Odeo route. If they have a shortage of skilled cops in an area they'd just cranial bomb a prisoner, hand him a badge and a gun, and send him out to cath other criminals under threat of death until his sentence is served.
This is actually a rather common sentence for some shadowrunners in some games.

Keep in mind if you have even a Criminal SIN, you're in The System. Excessive acts of cruelty and overly-elaborate schemes of pure Evil are reserved for the SINless.

Or, to put it another way: there's got to be some sort of middle ground between letting magicians run wild and the Dark Future of Tomorrow. There's gonna be some magician prisoners that society cares about.

Or, to put it a third way: Imagine you're Mom or Dad and young Jimmy has fallen in with the gangers. You read up on tough love and figure he needs to go "to camp" for awhile and get straightened out. Now imagine the presentation begins, "First, we implant explosives into his skull that go off if he tries to leave, then we ship him to our new facility built on the ruins of Auschwitz..."

That'll teach the little bastard to vandalize public property.

[QUOTE] How much of a hardened criminal is the character anyway? And more importantly, what did they get caught doing and how old were they at the time? If it wasn't too major I could see them making him a ward of the court and bundling them off to some kind of military academy to try and straighten them out, with an eye to recruiting them into the military proper afterwards once they've been educated to be an honest patriotic citizen. [QUOTE]

I'm having him as a Barrens kid who's sister is a joygirl who got beat-up by a john. He went into the "nice" area of town and was arrested getting some payback. So I'm guessing assault with a deadly weapon would be the charge. He did a lot of illegal stuff, but as it happened in the barrens no one knows. I figure he would have been @15 when he was arrested.

[QUOTE] Edit: And another thing that I just thought of, what happens if you're given a criminal SIN when you get convicted as a juvenile and then turn 18? As I understand it in the US you can apply to the courts to have your records sealed so they officially disappear. Does this mean the SIN then gets converted to a regular one or would you still keep the criminal one? [/QUOTE]

I picture a criminal SIN never going away. They have his DNA and info on file and they know he is magically active. It will be a major pain, but it fits in with the character nicely.
I'm figuring he escaped from the training camp or did a short stint in whatever group trained him. I'd like to keep him under 22.

As for prisons and background counts, I'd assume that ALL prisons have a high background count. All the negative emotions and the murders would make it a very nasty place to try to cast in.

There are two neg quals: SINner, which is 5 bp, means you have a real SIN tied to you, and Criminal SINner, which is 10 bp, means you have a real SIN tied to you with a criminal record.

I think the Mana Static spell, from SM, is likely something that any prison with magically active inmates has going at max hits.

Heck yeah, there you go. Criminal SINner all the way.

B P B P, BP BP all day long! (god, I sound like a munchkin, don't I? I just like to have enough points to build my character idea...I hate it when I can't flesh out a concept because I'm a point short. )

There are rules to remove negative qualitities.

Ingame the erasing of a SIN is one of the easist accomplished. Just find the right people, pay them a pile of cash and enjoy your new anonymity.

Oh, and don't forget to pay your karma costs (iirc, double the BP value of the negative flaw).

I can't see cops doing tests to see if the perp they just arrested is magically active. Would cost too much, and no police corp would want to shell out the extra cash.

I would probably have your char spontaneously cast a spell during the police chase or arrest.

Another option to his getting training, is for him to be the escort of a mage-masked runner, as the guards would do as little as possible. Your char takes care of the runner while they are in detention, awaiting processing. Runner get's him to make a call, and a few hours later, before morning court is done, the runner's team spring them (perhaps on the way to court from the holding center).

Your char becomes an apprentice for a few years, to get training, and as payback for helping set up the escape.

You still have the criminal SIN, as well as an escaped prisoner.

Could be wrong, but thought you automatically got a criminal sin if you were caught without a sin. Apparently being sinless is now a crime, I just imagine the low end areas of town aren't worth the effort to go chasing sinless people in.

I think the Lone Star sourcebook answer was that you got a criminal SIN created if you didn't already have one. After all, you have to have some way for them to identify you. But I think they were prison only SINs that wouldn't work elsewhere. If you want a civilian one good for renting an apartment you'd need to register/apply normally, I guess. Until then, though, you've still got your criminal one attached to your biometric records, so until you bribe someone or pay a good hacker the cops will be able to match you up with your past misdeeds.

I only have access to the SR4 BBB, and have not a lot of experience of SR3 other than fiction, but that's the way I imagined it to work too. The criminal sin coming up on background checks, and not being any use in daily life.

And a sinless guy can always do unofficial casual work, if the guy had a criminal sin and the employer had them checked out discretely they wouldn't have a hope in hades of getting work... even if only because the employer would rather be busted for hiring sinless people, which often the star could probably be bribed to overlook, than hiring known criminals that the star might want to arrest some time soon.

sure it would be a SIN, but every time you used it, you would show up as a former criminal on checks. therefor, trying to get anything about maybe low as a legaly rented place could be potentialy hard and so on...

nothing kills trust as seeing the word "criminal" on the screen after entering the persons SIN.

Well, I think the biggest problem with a criminal SIN is that it would only start with your first arrest. No DOB, no proof of citizenship and right to work, no credit history, no documented job history, etc. Would you offer credit to or rent an apartment to this man, even if it didn't have the "criminal" label on it?

There aren't many SINless after the second crash - everyone that wanted one could get one through the recovery programs - and people that don't have one indeed get a criminal SIN assigned when arrested.

That's assuming everyone could get somewhere to fill in the forms. Not necessarily true if you are in the barrens maybe I'm thinking.

On the contrary:

The ACHE is populated with many former barrens inhabitants.

The will is old news:

thanks for the reference, answers that question.