Wow! Now that is a phrase you do not want to hear. Ever!

Complete side-note. As a native and resident of the Seattle Area, I feel it is my duty to butt in here. Puyallup is pronounced Pew-wall-up.

Flattery and cogent argument all together. An enticing mix.

Your logic I agree with, but not your starting assumptions. When I stated that the average citizen would foot the bill, it's because I wasn't anticipating the jails to be situated on corporate territory or funded by the corps. The discussion arose in the context of Lone Star arresting people. So it was safe to assume that this was not specifically a corporate issue. The situations where the corp would become involved which is what you're talking about (assuming a large, extraterritorial corp) would be in the following situations: The criminal (given the stacking of the legal system in SR2070, victim would probably be a better term) is captured on corporate territority and when the criminal captured is a corporate citizen.

Dealing with the first situation - arrest takes place in extraterritoral territory we can consider two further possibilities. In the first, the criminal is a citizen of that corporation. This is matches exactly what you're talking about so I'm going to save it to the end (just to tease). The second possibility is that the criminal is not a citizen of that corp. In this case I think some sort of agreement between the corp and the state which the citizen is a member of, is likely. Thus the criminal would be exported to, for example, UCAS's own tax-funded prison system. A trial would be required of course, but I do not think that the fact of the crime taking place in an extraterritorial location would save the criminal - most countries will still punish a citizen even if they go abroad to commit their crimes. Though it depends on the crime, of course. Certainly UCAS does not want to create the impression with the megacorps that it condones its citizens breaking in and sabotaging equipment etc.

Naturally this whole process only happens once the corp has done as it pleases with its own interrogations. For crimes that don't warrant imprisonment - say someone that steals or commits a minor assault in the open to the public shopping centre of the Aztechnology pyramid, they would probably be released back to UCAS on condition of hefty fines to which the UCAS government would likely be the guarantor. Essentially, as you can see, I'm approaching everything in this discussion from the point of view of what legal system would develop if powerful corporations had heavy influence in writing and passing state laws. And the principle is one of turning as much tax money into private money as possible.

Now if the criminal is a citizen of another corp, or SINless, then it becomes a lot more interesting. Financial remuneration by the rival corp may get their citizen back to them (and assuming it was something like the minor fight in the shopping centre example), the citizen would likely pay it back with plenty of interest on their return. Renraku doesn't want to say to Mr. Wageslave's collaegues and resident family that he's never coming back because of a minor fight somewhere. It has to be seen to show some care to the employees. If the crime or the individual is more significant however (and the two will likely go together) then that employee may never be released by the corp that captured him. I agree that long-term imprisonment is less likely here because, as you say, it will be paid for by the shareholders. In this case, we might be looking at execution (the Azzies), an accident whilst attempting escape or "rehabilitation." The last being a euphemism for all the unpleasant things that 2070 technology can do to someone.

SINless might be covered by agreements with the surrounding governments or the individual might be disappeared. If they're unimportant and know nothing, they might just be suitably punished and dumped somewhere back in the city, but I don't envisage a corporate policy on this because the occasion of a SINless person of no importance carrying out a significant crime on corporate territory will be rare. Shadowrunners don't count as unimportant - they'll be interrogated and, if ultimately identified might be handed back to UCAS for imprisonment or might be disappeared or rehabilitated. If they have the bad luck of being caught by the Azzies, they'll probably end up on a South American Game Show!

So next box on the matrix that needs a tick in it is the corporate citizen that gets into trouble outside of extraterritoral jurisdiction, e.g. in Seattle proper. Non-prison worthy crimes will probably be met with fines that the corp will probably have to pay to get their citizen back. In which case, I agree - no prison. They'll just be working their hide off to reimburse the corp when they get back. For prisonworthy offences... interesting. If it were a level playing field, I would say that the government would bill the corp for the cost of imprisoning their citizen. In the real world, prisoners are often returned to their own country under an agreement that they will serve the appropriate term there. That would be hard to enforce or verify with the corps, who probably don't have much of a prison infrastructure. And anyway, it's not a level playing field. I think the governments would be forced to accept some sort of double standard in which they have to accept that they will only get some financial recompense from the corp or else pay the cost of imprisonment themself (to the delight of Lone Star and affiliated prison interests). If the corp wont pay for the prisoner's return, UCAS is lumbered with them and you could see a "dissappearing" but as I pointed out previously, there are private interests that profit by it.

Now it may seem from all the above that I'm now agreeing that there isn't much cause to imprison people, but I'm not. There are no likely numbers attached to the above incidents and all I've done is outline the possible situations in which some would more naturally not lead to prison. By far the most common case is going to be UCAS citizens getting into trouble predominantly in UCAS territory or occasionally removed under agreement to imprison or fine from corporate territory. And in this case, private interests provide a financial incentive to imprison.

Now I left one case until last and I haven't forgotten it - I'm not going to leave you unsatisfied. That is the case of the corporate citizen commiting a crime on corporate territory. I honestly think that the cases in which a crime is commited that demands imprisonment is going to be very rare. Most people in prison today would be better served by punishments and strategies other than incarceration. But they are incarcerated nonetheless due to the profitability of imprisonment and society's need to see punishment. The first is not going to apply for the reasons you've given. The second is going to be mitigated by the non-representative nature of corporate governance. So the crimes that would actually result in imprisonment will be a smaller subset than general society. Furthermore, most of those crimes will be far more common amongst unemployed and uneducated people whilst the wageslaves of a corporation will obviously be neither of these. So there's no sense in maintaining a prison infrastructure at all. The few cases of those that cannot be tolerated or dealt with within the corporation, will likely be dealt with by exile and withdrawal of citizenship or an unspecified "removal" or "rehabilitation."

I hope that's not been too long a post. Basically, I agree with what you say, but think it's only a small subset of the general situation. Prisons will be big business in 2070 and convictions = profit.

-K.

Cornholing: 100% Totally Clean & SFW - Really!

...what is strange is that this is totally on the level as they have a national association, official rules, and tournaments...

(...yeah yeah yeah, so us Midwesterners are just plain bored sometimes...)

...reference to the term which has been misappropriated for more vulgar purposes.

Of course since it is a regional thing (I originally come from Wisconsin) I can see why most people wouldn't realise it actually does refer to a harmless game that has been played for nearly a century.

[/derail]

There was something about Silicon Valley in the CalFree book. Maybe it was Ares that took over there. I seem to recall they scooped the Japanese that were taking over, but I can't really recall the specifics.

AzTechnology has strong marketing and an incentive to stay out of japanese San Francisco.

The GSINR is placed above the corp SINR. Horzion gets the rights to forming a SINR by becoming an AAA. It may create SINs for any citizen. We may assume that somewhere in the GSINR statue there is a clause that requires known previous SINs to be linked into the new SIN. Previous given ones are invalid:

A change of nationality requires a new SIN, as pg. 259 SR4 tells us that nationality figures into the SIN itself. I consider it bloody unlikely that all issuing entities keep the standards set by the GSINR (see real-world EU law), so the database will see much work and low protection due to ressource allocation issues. Secure or fast?

For more shenanigans, consider that the GSINR connects to the databases of other corps. It does not have a database on its own. In the case of a mega loosing extraterretoriality, the aforementioned busy database is worked by someone who is out of a job.

So I'm taking a nice full post and ripping out one point I thought was really interesting. Let's say said captive is a Sammy with ridiculous Retractable Spur skills and a Datajack. Corp hooks said Sammy up to a BTL-level trip, making him think that he's in the fight of his life, and monitors his neural responses with a Sim-Recorder (do they have non-implanted ones yet? this is one area of the rules I have sadly not kept up with). Ever wondered how they get those Rating 6 Skillchips for combat skills? Wonder no more.

Around the seattle area, it's pronounced "Pew-al-up" or "Pew-all-up" (al like the name albert, or all like the word all)

Sorry for the off topic post!

edit, and some one beat me to it already, I'm really out of it to day