I was thinking about concepts of "identity" and "heat" and so forth and someone was asking what rating criminal ids are needed to purchase alcohol illegally and it got me thinking:

Suppose we had an index to measure dillinquincy, in Shadowrun. I mean, I could think of lots of advantages. For starters, this index might directly relate to a nuyen value for purposes of how much Lone Star charges for its services.

For example, stopping a rating 4 crime for example might net them 1,000 nuyen.
Stopping a rating 5 crime might net them 2,800 nuyen. Stopped or not, Lone Star would probably charge for the amount of crime in the city. Even things that don't usually require Lone Star's intervention.

For example, using a fake ID to buy liquor might just rank 0.0004 on Lone Star's crime index. This gets automatically added to the perpretrator's record, but otherwise no other Lone Star action is necessary. Now, if later in life that perpetrator commits a more serious crime, the "unregistered" crimes can be factored in to his crime index and punished together, so that someone with a clean record might get a few hours less jail time or a slightly lower ticket fee than someone with that 0.00004 on their record from six years ago.

So many things can factor into the crime indexes... what corp you work for, what job you hold, how much time has passed since the crime was committed, the variety or frequency of offenses, etc. But I imagine the most influential factor might be the political climate when the crime was committed:

Suppose voters in Seattle gets sick of these dilinquents buying alcohol all the time, and want additional Lone Star involvement in these cases. This can pretty much work under standard supply and demand models. Lone Star has a fixed supply of attention they can give to any given crime, and the People of Seattle have a specific demand for Lone Star's resources against that crime, and eventually an equilibrium Crime Index is determined.

A Lone Star AR probably keeps track of regular Crime Index information that is updated in real time. Kind of like Robocop's heads up display... "Crime in progress... 2044 Union Street. DI 3.11173. Armed Robery."

I wrote DI up above because I don't think a Lone Star beat cop ever needs to worry about Crime Index much, besides having a general idea of which crimes are higher index than which other crimes. Judges and lawyers use Crime Index a lot, but beat cops use "DI" or Dispatch Index.

A Dispatch Index is used to compare different crimes in the city, comparing its Crime Index with the estimated percentage likelihood of making a bust based on information collected at central dispatch (and processed by a program) and the library of past experiences by cops under similiar conditions. Everytime an arrest is made or goes unmade, it affects the Dispatch Index for all future beat cops under those similiar conditions. Thus, Lone Star's pretty much got enough data to have their CI and DI pretty accurate.

If one crime is happening with a DI of 4.993 and another with 5.3882, there are any number of reasons why this might be the case. The 5.3882 might have a higher Crime Index (and thus be given a higher priority because it will make Lone Star more money), or 5.3882 might be an easier bust against a more incompetent criminal, or the 5.3882 might just be closer ensuring a greater probability of making both arrests if they are done in proper order.

The Crime Index would also, of course, take into account the cost to Lone Star, since these losses will have to be recupperated. So the CI (and thus the DI) will be higher for such cases. However, circumstantial modifiers might not be reimbursed, and so the DI will be lower for these cases.

For example, let's say there's a reported mugging going on with a Crime Index of 1.0000. At the same time, there's the illegal rape of an unregistered prostitute (who has a Silver account with a AA bank) that has a Crime Index of 3.118. They're equally distant, and in both cases the assailants are apparently amateurs armed only with a knife. They have DIs of 4.115 and 6.233, respectively.

Of course the cop goes after the 6.233, right? He's required to. Hell, he probably gets paid commission off the DI amount when the bust is made.

But then the assailant stops, jacks a crappy car (CI rises to 4.77, DI to 7.875) and takes off down the freeway. Dispatch automatically recalculates the Dispatch Index and figures the cops chances of catching this guy just dropped a lot, so the DI drops from 6.233 to 5.88. Although the cops chances of catching him have dropped, the CI is higher and so Lone Star can afford to send more cops to attempt to apprehend the criminal, and so the DI fluctuates up and down until it settles on a final value of 5.88.

We're still following the cop. Each cop has an individual Dispatch Index for this crime. The criminal now drives down into the barrens, in a Z-rated zone. The cop's Dispatch Index recalculates and now the DI drops to 2.8.

The mugger we mentioned earlier had a Dispatch Index of 4.115 but the mugger already fled the scene (DI drops to 3.87) and the cop is further away after chasing the rapist (DI for the mugger drops to 3.004.) The mugger's DI (3.004) is higher than the rapist's DI (2.8) and so the cop turns around and chases after the mugger.

Meanwhile, that's one less cop chasing after the rapist, so all the other cops that are chasing the rapist now have their DIs lowered a little bit, to reflect the reduced liklihood of catching the rapist with less support while going through the barrens. If they, too, have other crimes registered at the moment, the DI might drop low enough to justify their presence elsewhere.

I can see a problem with basing the DI primarily on the likelihood of a bust.

>>All unites in the vicinity of 30234 Pierce, respond to report of a break-in. Three suspects reported, possible magically-capable suspect. DI: 6.03
30 seconds later.
>>All unites are required to respond to the corner of Pierce and Vincent. Reports of a blind, deaf, quadriplegic orc attempting to mug people with a broken butter-knife. DI 9, +1 (minority suspect)

That's actually a neat idea. Obviously, the DI would have to account for the values of both the officer already being in pursuit, the loss of value of the police suddenly wandering off for a more profitable crime, the number of officers needed for a particular crime and the benefit of saving taxpayer lives (PR). Basically though, all you're doing is making up a formula to represent the natural prioritizing of crime that's already done and displaying those details to the officers. I'm under the impression that generally the crimes are prioritized and police are ordered there, rather than letting the officer decide specifically which crime he wants to respond to. In other words, the cop would get information on a single crime and no DI listed, with all this information kept by the dispatcher, which is more or less how it's done already.

As an aside, I also think the image of a dozen cops line driving and tackling a blind, deaf, quadrapalegic ork absolutely hilarious.

I'd like to be the first to say that this makes my brain hurt.

Obviously this is much more complex than would be used in actual play. I suspect he will, at some point, actually put some rules in play that reflect this....

I like the cyberpunkish flavour of this - technological, computerized, dehumanized and totally in accord of LoneStar being a privatized law-enforcement agency. Cops out to make a profit (for the cop-corp, that is) aren't going to act like cops in service of their nation or city. And yes, PR is the main purpose here - and, especially, looking goods in the eyes of the people that matter (the guys in A+ neighbourhoods).