Quick, stupid question:

Does the UCAS have the death penalty?

Has that even been stated anywhere, either way?

Given that the UCAS has (As far as I can tell) basically the old USA constitution and everything else, I'd say that they would have it, but they'd likely make fairly rare use of it.

Why not? Death penalty is legal under the constitution, and it's awfully cheap when you don't have to worry about all that fair trial stuff.

Well, you do have to worry about all that fair trial stuff, which is the problem and why it is rarely used. You have to jump alot of extra hoops to get a death sentence conviction over a life imprisonment. Now UCAS could have upturned plenty of the laws that make this the case, but my understanding has always been that UCAS basically kept all the old laws as well, which means that death penalty would still be a pain.

And actually death penalty is way more expensive than regular prison because death row inmates get tons of special concessions and everything.

I think he was referring to those lacking a System Identification Number. But still, for those who do have a SIN, you are correct - to much legal jargon to make any significant use of it.

Oh, yeah, for SINless they resisted arrest and had to be shot.

I was actually asking for those who had SINs.

Which is why I answered along SINner lines

It can happen but will be rare.

I am in fact referring to SINners. While you assume that the laws all more or less match the current laws, I assume this is a dystopia so given two reasonable options, you choose the worst one.

Pick which general philosophy you run by and use it.

(I'm pretty sure it will be common in the CAS because, while the CAS sticks closer to the US Constitution than the UCAS did, it also stuck closer to the laws and practics of the south, which has plenty of executions to go around.)

I imagine the death penalty still exists, but how much it is used varies greatly by area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punis...e_United_States

The number of executions performed varies widely by state(texas having over 4 times as much as the next highest state, Virginia, and over a hundred times that of my home state. While the lines and who does a lot of who doesn't may have changed, the general rule is that rural areas tend to exercise the death penalty far more often than urban areas.

A dead prisoner is a prisoner that isn't making money for the privately-run prisons.







-karma

I like the idea of the guv'mint keeping all the likely suspects SINless so they won't have any inconvenient civil rights when you want to shoot them.

"Texas has the death penalty and we use it! Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty. My state's putting in an express lane."

-Ron White

(Sorry, just had too).

"Some jurisdictions maintain the Death Penalty for Murder One. Seattle does not." Shadowtech, pg. 108.

Yes it's an old reference, but I doubt the situation has changed much since late 2052. Many of the old (SR1 and SR2 era) location source books have a chart listing the penalties for a variety of crimes, including the legality of gear, that section usually mentions if that nation has capital punishment.

Regarding the Death Penalty in the UCAS, keep in mind that it is made up of both the old USA and old Canada. Each state probably decides for itself weather or not to have capital punishment.

My thoughts exactly. Its probably still legal under the UCAS and the CAS constitutions, but I'll bet that the corrections corps (like Lone Star) have lobbied it out of practical existence, or even secretly fund the appeals for death row inmates.

Why would they need to secretly fund these appeals? They simply need to spin it as being interested in justice. Recent events demonstrate that a not-insignificant number of people detained for execution are so detained on false grounds. When you have a record as bad as two thirds of death sentences being overturned in appeals because of misconduct or incompetance, I think it's valid for even a good-ole-boy corp like Lone Star to say that they are seriously concerned by the possibility of the execution of an innocent.

Great point

Yes but their also not costing the government money into the above privately run prisons. Don't think for a second that your government (especially in SR) won't kill you to save a buck.

I would imagine most places would have it legal to use the death penalty but would not use it. Why kill a prisoner when you can just charge more taxes to keep em in jail. with or without a SIN. And if its cheaper to keep them alive because of lawyer costs then why bother killing them? They are a serial killer of babies and toddlers perhaps? well that would be like an insurance policy that makes money. who would want to shut down the prisons if serial killers would be released? I think the only way to keep a good dystopian feel with a oft used death penalty would be if the soon to be executed were sent to a chop shop for human spare parts. That works even better if there are SINless around to not even need a real trial to go to the chop shop. The SINers would like to have cheap transplants availble to those who dont get caught violating the law.

I like that line of thought because the next step is that the only case where the death penalty would be considered is in white collar crime cases Imagine the trial of the Enron execs if capital punishment was a possibility?

or go Niven style and consider that every crime might warrent the death penalty to keep the supply of organs moving. all depends on who is running things I guess, if the corps are in charge as is usually standard it might not be a death penalty.

This thread reminds me of one of the pictures in SOTA 2064. The troll with the "Cleaning Crew" shirt hauling out a couple of freshly killed inmates as the man next in line watches.

Hmm, now i wanna play a rogue LS cop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itmNiTwHOsM
Mix with Robocop and call it a Day ^^

I think it was in either the Denver Source Book or Neo-Anarchists Guide to North America, that stated the UCAS only has the death penalty for high treason only. The CAS still has it for most capitol crimes (including 2nd degree murder) though.

I bet Aztland isnt so nice as to let everyone serve out their term or go with a nice electric chair. I would suspect they harvest organs and use inmates no good for that as guinea pigs.

Five words: Pay-per-view execution broadcasts.

I can totally see Horizon doing this.

Horizon seems outwardly too cuddly. And that seems like a step too far for most populations in even the dystopia that is Shadowrun.

Aztech might do it though.

Running Man anyone?

You can get snuff BTLs and pirate broadcasts of Azzie bloodsports at every corner, who would bother with that?

Yeah, I tend to fall in with the prisons being profitable for private corps school of thought, so I tend to think the death penalty would be around but rarely invoked, particularly since some violent crims might make for good Urban Brawl competitors. Basically, if you're easy enough to handle that you can be captured, you're easy enough to be detained indefinitely at a profit. Plus, in my games at least, law enforcement has this funny habit of killing the Dahmer types during resisting arrest "incidents." Hard to handle criminals like shadowrunners are also likely to get the vigilante treatment, but there's also cases where a corp might cut a deal to work as company men, perhaps even getting released back into the wild with new SINs and some cosmods.

Prisons run by private corporations would be profitable. There is actually a book out (I don't recall what it was called though) about a public prison that was set up by someone who had half a clue what they were doing (I think a judge did it actually) and the prison cost less than just about any other prison to set up, and actually turned a profit. It also had the same quality of life (or better) than most other prisons.

It was basically the same as all other prisons, but it turned a profit. This was basically because they cut out all wasteful spending. They cut out things like buying steaks for the prison employees to take home every day (No, I'm not joking, alot of prison costs go towards this). I'm not sure where all their other cost cuts came from or anything, but yeah, basically goes into length about how this one prison was designed and build and run very well and so turned a profit while costing next to nothing, and then texas needs about 100x as much money to set up a prison of half the size that fails to turn a profit.

Some stuff I said is wrong I'm sure, as it was just something a teacher had mentioned for a bit in class a couple years ago. Never actually read the book myself, but it sounds kind of interesting, and very much supports the idea that dystopia future companies could turn a decent profit off of prisoners.

Oh, and as a side note, I'd imagine that awakened are more likely to not be kept prisoner. They'll either get offered a job in the company or given the death penalty due to the difficulty in keeping them under control.

Atzlan does it, but for free. Remember, they have public "sacrifices".

As a corollary to this, there was a case last year of two judges in PA who were receiving bribes from a privately run juvenile detention company to send offenders to their facilities. These judges would routinely send offenders to these facilities for otherwise minor infractions (things that would usually warrant community service). The end result is that these facilities would receive more non-violent offenders, which cost them less to monitor, but would receive the same per person/per diem fee from the state government. Once these judges were found out, the state had to deal with hundreds of appeals.

In the Sixth World, however... expect this to be a regular occurrence. I would imagine that Corps like Lone Star would secretly track the profit they derive from individual judge's sentencing, and those found to be profitable would probably be approached about lobbying services, campaign contributions, and highly paid "consulting" jobs after they retire.

I could also see occurances such as: Prisoner A is about to be released. Prisoner B is in for much longer sentence that has years and years left on it. Prisoner B dies (maybe gang fight or so). Prison authorities relable Prisoner A as the dead one and send the body of prisoner B to the morge under the name of prisoner A.

Yeah, perverse incentives are one of the big reasons I'm not really in favor of prison labor. Now I don't really buy into the idea that all criminals are victims of society, nor am I really a big union guy. But surely anyone could see how it'd be hard for free men to compete for a job when there's prisoners out there who can do the same work for under a dollar an hour and aren't subject to as many of those pesky labor regulations. Uneducated people with few job prospects are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime, so shipping off some of the jobs they can actually do to people who don't have a choice in the matter seems like looking for trouble to me, particularly if anyone who then gets in trouble is added to the prison labor pool. It's sort of like sending jobs to China, only shadier.


Anyway, I've never really incorporated it into my SR games because I don't really have my players deal with prison systems, but it seems like the sort of thing that makes for a pretty logical outgrowth of the dystopian wage slave motif.

Woo, I have something new to cycle into my Sig!



True, in general if a runner is in the prison system, it is time to retire the character, so the specifics of what happen aren't generally of a big concern. I mean sure it is nice to know if Samurai Joe gets out in 2 years (And maybe makes a guest appearance in the future), or 10 years (and maybe is a starting character for the next edition) or gets killed (And gets to become a Shadim (or whatever they're called) host).

*hmms* Tanamous run prison corp, anyone? Sounds like a good plan!

Given extraterritoriality many national laws don't have to apply in prisons. Which to me says hassle free medical tests! Particularly on the awakened that way you know how invasive the drug is (as they get all sensitive and lose magic).

I agree with the points made here, and keep in mind that on Corp Territory, rules change a lot. I guess most extraterritorial Corps in the UCAS maintain use of death penalty for especially heinous civic crimes or high treason, but they also maintain a high level of discretion for their security corps, so you could say that they often make use of "capital punishment" against shadowrunning intruders..

medical experimentation is spelled out in SOTA 2064. unfortunetly the only referance to a death penalty was the pic mentioned above with a big troll wearing a cleaning crew shirt carrying out a body as an inmate looks on. After reading it though this thread does look like what you would read in the comments.

Renraku judge "You, you and you, take this orc outside and shoot him."

Yes and no... if a prison system is contracted by a government, then the government in question probably has a requirement that the prison corp follow certain laws, guidelines, and regulations. While an extraterritorial corp isn't obligated to follow local law on their own territory by default, if it is part of their contractual obligations then they risk a breach of contract lawsuit or a termination of the contract.

It also wouldn't surprise me if certain national governments simply contracted the management and manpower, while maintaining the actual ownership of the prison and the land it sits on... that way, no extraterritoriality.

I would presume that's how most govt's handle it.

that presumes the govt isnt trying to turn a blind eye in the hopes of bringing costs down.

Or perhaps the government wants a place to send people to where they're unprotected; Guantanamo Bay/Extraordinary Rendition style.

That works for LWOP (Life Without Parole) inmates, Ascalaphus, but not for anybody with a *chance* of getting out. (Lone Star sourcebook indicates there's still parole and probation!)

Max security, when *all* of the prisoners have no legal chance of getting out, can indeed be hellholes. Yes.

Anywhere where the prisoner might be released, however, cannot be, or else it would be a ticking time bomb of PR catastrophe.

Also: I don't see it likely - it's possible (with a very slim chance), but not likely - that prisoners lose their right to habeas corpus reviews when their sentence comes courtesy of a UCAS or CAS court.

Which pretty well sets a floor to how bad prison conditions can get. It only takes one prisoner who suddenly gets released cuz his trial got overturned on appeal to blab to the media, after all.

And even IRL, there's a gathering movement towards prison reform.

Further to this point, current RL technology is progressing enough to make home arrest with GPS tracker more feasible for non-violent offenders. In 2072 with dytopic loss of privacy and ubiquitous surveillance there would be no technical¹ reason why all non-violent criminals wouldn't be on house arrest, still able to go to their wage slave jobs during the day and consume corporate entertainment pablum at home at night. Only violent and dangerous² offenders would be in an actual prison.

¹ Though there might be plenty of economic and political reasons to keep non-violent offenders in prison.

² The definition of "violent and dangerous" will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Good point. Killing them isn't always an option. But hurting is another story; I can imagine a judge inflicting some extralegal punishment on the side by the selection of which prison to send someone to.

I'm suddenly getting ideas about a prison organized like circles of hell, with varying degrees of unpleasantness for the inmates.

"Guilty! Send him to the fifth circle!"

Well, in the reimagining of Deathrace, they framed a really good race driver and then paid different people to get him into one specific jail so he could race.
I say that's pretty shadowrun right there.

I think the big difference should be in having a real SIN. Without a SIN, you're a probationary citizen.. probably not protected by habeas corpus, or all manner of rights to exhaustive trial.

So suppose someone conveniently loses a SIN before being framed.. real convenient..