I'm working on a character's background who spent around 5 years in prison. I've read through the old forums, looked through some third edition books, but I can't find anything about what corrective measures would be taken with augmented or awakened individuals for long periods of time.

I could see anyone who enters into a correctional corp database being cataloged with all known abilities. this could lead to a "Harrison Bergeron" like setup where each individual is given degenerative items to counter their enhancements. This is already cannon in a way with the "Mage Mask".

Location is always a good thing too, placing your more dangerious inmates in areas of restricting climate can act as another layer of captivity.

I could also see a system located in some isolated region where inmates are plugged into sim sense all day, where they sit through "reeducation" classes like ethincs, morality, of knitting (ala Demolition Man).

Any thoughts?

Discussion about cyberware and prisons

It goes on to talk about magic.

Damn, missed that one, lack of sleep. Thanks.

So Ka. I'd have gone on, but... time to sleep on this end.

I had something called Mage cuffs written up in another old forum thread. Basically they're an anti-astral projection control. A gauntlet style bracelet with an inbuilt taser, a photosensitive sensor and circular band of flourescent FAB. When a mage projects out of his body his astral body moves through the FAB, pushing it aside and termporarily breaking the band's glow. The light sensor picks this up firing the taser, the stun should knock the mage out and jerk his astral body back.

In SR2 other containment measures for full mages could include underground prisons (Fortress style) where moving through the Earth makes it difficult to project too, in SR3 its less restrictive but still dangerous (at enough depth its not worth the mages time to go out and back in).

Try to find the old Lone Star sourcebook somewhere, it has a ton of info on prisons and such.

The Abstruse One

Could always implant a cranial bomb that goes off when your brain waves match that of a person projecting or casting a spell.
(mainly for the 0 essence cost listed)
They "remove" it when you are sufficiantly rehabilitated
(read: screw up again and we'll thump your skull for you)

I always imagined that prison was especially brutal on awakened characters, even if just because you need to take really harsh measures to keep them under control. For instance, I imagine that a LOT of cyberware gets installed in them to take their magic rating down, and that would have some added benefits (One minute you're chucking fireballs at the guards, the next, your legs are carrying you back to your cell). Also, any prison with magical inmates probably has high-powered and evil mages working there, because they'd have a good body of test subjects for anything they wanted to try out, and there'd be a lot of useful minds for them to probe.

I figure they'd put more in just to take your essence/magic down. Plus, like I said, there's any number of additional safeguards you can put in place that way. Such as putting in cyberlegs designed to keep the inmate from leaving the cell, auto-injectors to drug you up instantly if you get out of line, magnetic limbs to lock you in place, etc.

Depends on where you end up. If you're in a corp owned prison, you might get all of that stuff and more as you become a test subject for some of their more clandestine projects. You probably won't get out anytime soon, either. Or ever.

If you're in a public prison, that all costs cash which the government doesn't want to spend on prisoners. Simple datajack with a simsense loop is cheap and efficient (with rehabilitative training included... think Demolition Man with virtual trainers). They already to it for most prisoners to keep them managable.

I'm thinking the "rehab" programs also include psycotropic ASIST like Judas and basic behavorial modification

True, the government wouldn't want to spend that much money. But I find it ahrd to imagine that the government would still be running its own prisons by the time of SR. I mean hell, they're well on their way to giving it up now. And if they were still imprisoning people, liberals would attack the simsense plan as being inhumane, while the conservatives would attack it on the grounds that it aimed to rehabilitate prisoners

Ah, but if you tweak the RAS override gear to turn the prisoners into sweatshop workers, the conservatives would quiet down

If conservatives can be bought with sweats, can liberals be bought with watermelons?

Yeah, but remember that even in the UCAS SINless have no rights, and the government decides who has a SIN (It's a fake! Fake I tell you!).

Even with prisons privately owned and run for the government, cost is job #1. Unless they have a method of making money off of what they're doing (rented test subjects, maybe? Slave labor?) they're going to go with the cheapest possible solution. I wouldn't be surprised if the SINless regularly died of "natural causes" such as naturally costing too much to feed and house for the trouble.

And remember, according to Focault, the purpose of prison isn't to punish or to rehabilitate, but is intentionally designed to create a nastier, more brutal permanant criminal class.

The purpose of this class is to
A) Demonstrate to the rest of society what you're not supposed to do
B) Justify increased invasion of personal privacy due to the needed security precautions to protect the public from this manufactured criminal class.

So yes, prisons, while they pay lip service to rehabilitation/punishment, and even if everyone involved thinks that's what their purpose is, a shoddy prison system run with little money which brutalizes the mind and allows for the forming of more criminal contacts with which to propagate further criminal activity is the unstated goal. Structuring the prison system around this and Foucault's other concept the Panopticon (which in itself it a good metaphor for both our current society and especially that of SR.) would probably be closest to the mark.

I'd argue that he's wrong on the purpose, but then I look at the results of the last twenty years and... damn.

Hell i asked my GM about his take on prison and the awakened and he just said they would use things like trauma patches to perminantly reduce your magic to zero. What is the Mage mask?

They have a canonical surgical option that can remove one's ability to use magic without having to install any cyberware, not to mention Scorching and space.

SINless in the UCAS have rights, just not full rights. They are considered "Probationary Citizens" and have all normal Human Rights. Once you are arrested, Lone Star gives you a Criminal SIN.

The Mage Mask is in SR3. It prevents Line of Sight and has a built-in thought disruption device.

The Magemask is actually in MiTS (page 12).

P.S. Included in that section is a couple paragraphs about shortterm and longterm imprisonment of awakened. Magemask + handcuffs or straightjacket for shortterm. Longterm varies by jurisdiction, but can include
- drugs or simsense loops to temporarily suppress magical abilities
- installing a datajack to feed the simsense in more strongly, resulting of course in temporary suppression as well as a small permanent Magic reduction
- drugs or surgery to permanently reduce Magic ability to 0
- early release for services rendered, cortex bomb enforced of course

There's some information in the old Awakenings sourcebook, which talks about what happens if you get caught. It basically covers 1) drugs, 2) simsense, 3) surgery. That seems to be either standard or what is the urban myth among the awakened.

Don

The prisons probably do the drugs-to-Magic-0 thing only if the prisoner is particularly violent. Otherwise, they'd get protests, boycotts, senate hearings, etc on how cruel it is. They'd probably start with the lower-end stuff (mage cuffs, simsense, etc.) unless it's a repeat offender or the person keeps making trouble with magic while incarcerated. Oh, and if you're an "odd" magical tradition that's seen as "evil" (blood mage, toxic, insect, even voodoo), expect harsher treatment.

Remember, it all comes down to cost efficiency. It's much cheaper to install a used datajack in a mage and loop some simsense then throw them in a cell with an IV and come roll them over every few hours to avoid bedsores than it is to kill a mage's magic with cyber and drugs. Sure, stimpatches are cheap, but you also have ot factor in the costs of security when the protestors show up, the cost of their lost revenues

The Abstruse One

Quoting from Magic In the Shadows:

"for long-term imprisonment, most municipalities use drugs or simsense loops to interfere with a magician's concentration. Some prisons have gone so far as to install datajacks in Awakened prisoners, to make the simsense feed more direct. (...) Some jurisditions use drug treatments or radical surgery to permanenty remove a magical criminal's ability to use magic. (...) Civil rights groups strongly protest the use of such treatments, and these measures are considered to be a punishment just short of the death penalty in most jurisdictions. Rumors abund of corporations and governments cutting deals with magical criminals, giving them their freedom in exchange for promises of long-term service (usually enforced by implants such as cortex bombs".

It plainly appears that either you are actually not remembering correctly, or the statements you mention have been (wisely) superseded. Destroying a magician's magical ability is the extreme option, and disabling the offender for the length of the sentence is the default. Moreover, it makes much more sense this way. The state avoids creating cripples and likely welfare cases out of convicted citizens (destroying magical ability is the equivalent of blinding and amputating legs for a mundane), and avoids enforcing an extremely controversial treatment except in really extreme cases. There is no way in Earth the Supreme Court would rule that causing a permanent and *incurable* disability would be less cruel and unusual than running the *risk* of causing a *treatable* mental disorder (by means of psychotherapy, or programmable ASIST biofeedback).

Except that it's not exactly a disability. It's just taking away magical powers and making the individual the same as the rest of us. I somewhat doubt that the UCAS constitution guarantees the right to be magically active.

Depriving one of his or her inborn abilities is causing him/her a disability, even if such abilities are above and beyond the capabilities of average people. It would be the same as causing brain damage to a person with genius-level IQ or a physical disability to a professional athlete that still leves him able or everyday activities. Good luck if you're going to try persuade a court that such damage doesn't constitute a disability because it leaves "the individual the same as the rest of us".

It's the same as telling people that are really good at computers that they aren't allowed to use computers, which is exactly the way US courts deal with a lot of hackers that get caught. Brain damage and physical disabilities are not allowed because they interfere with your health. You can lose all your magical ability and still be a perfectly healthy (meta) human being.

Preventing hackers from using computers still leaves their computer proficiency intact (ready to be used when the court's interdiction expires). Removing a magician's ability causes him a permanent damage. Causing someone a permanent loss of *any* of its inborn faculties is causing him a signifcant injury. If my knee's ligaments are damaged in a way that prevents me from doing sports, I've suffered a significant health damage, even if I am not impaired in everyday tasks. There is no way a court could subscribe to your argument. Ask yourself why surgical castration for sex offenders has never been upheld by courts.

You presume that the UCAS would find magical ability an inborn trait, and that depriving them is a violation of the VIII Amendment. Even if it is protected now, I doubt it was before the Dumas test was created.
Due Process, OTOH, at least procedural, is not an argument, and substantive DP is... dependant on the Court.

Has FASA/Fanpro ever produced a full copy of the UCAS constitution? If not, that seems like it would be a good thing to do. Wouldn't take up that many pages in a sourcebook, and would go miles in terms of flavoring the game. Plus, it would proved ENDLESS source of debate on this forum:)

But seriously, I would like to know which rights they envision us not having that we do have now, and if there's any that we have in SR that we don't have now (doubtful, but you never know; judging by some games, I wonder if the UCAS guarantees the right to bear a smartlink, bone lacing, and wired reflexes...)

That's hearsay. I want to see the actual law that says that

It's only cruel if the executioner giggles and it's only unusual if you do it once.

Just my sick opinion

I'll never understand why they prohibited cruel AND unusual punishment. If everyone can agree that something is cruel, why does it need to be unusual to be banned?

Unusual punishment is probably in there to keep judges and others in power from setting sentences and punishment at their whim. It would be unusual for a jay walker to be sentenced to 15 years hard time, while not nessecarily being 'cruel'. But, IANAL or a Constitutional Scholar.

Does IANAL mean I Am Not A Lawyer? Because if so, it's pretty screwed up that that phrase is common enough to merit an internet abbreviation.

I hadn't thought of it like that before. I was thinking in terms of it limiting judges' ability to find new punishments. I still think I'd say that giving a jay walker 15 years would still be caught under "cruel" buy maybe that's just me. Also, I wish the provision at least said cruel OR unusual punishments. I don't like the idea that someone out there could possibly interpret it to mean cruel punishment is ok, as long as its not unusual.

But, how do you justify to the taxpayers the expense of keeing a FAB lined block of prison cells for these inmates?

By not doing that...? There are many cheaper methods. It would be cheaper to just execute them too, that doesn't mean it's going to be the default solution.

How else do you keep astrally projecting inmates from leaving their cells and going off to either not be punished, potentially commit more crimes (possession anyone), become more powerful and enable an escape, etc? Keep awakened personnel on staff? that'll cost a bundle, critters are the same way and none are infallible.

Wards? Perhaps maintained by inmates for the sake of cheapness? Double-layered so those who made one ward are stopped by the other?

JaronK

Prisoners doing wards aer a bad idea, too much co-ordination, not reliable. How do you know if they did a force 4 or a force 6? they could just drop them at any time. the cheapest solution is still forced datajack implantation, with a jack-stopped sinsense feed of a rehabilitory nature.

You don't need a datajack for simsense. Some kind of locked harness with a 'trode net would more than suffice. Add a magemask as a failsafe and maintain an alarm ward (which is both cheap and easy to maintain) around the facility, and you're good to go. If a mage projects, the alarm sounds and the idiot's body is put into a special area where they just wait for him to return at which point he will be treated just like anyone else who attempted escape.

Assorted high-grade magical security guards would doubtlessly be around as well, especially those with a hoard of powerful elementals on call guided by an equally large hoard of watcher spirits who could all track the criminal down with ease. Since he escaped, they'd have free reign to kill him where he stood, too. Assuming they don't just put a cattle prod to his body until he's disrupted.

Regardless, he only has a few hours of escape time to go with. Upon return, his sentence just increased and they have a reason to attempt to get permission to strip him of his magic forever, especially if he does anything even remotely illegal (beyond the escape itself) during the escape attempt. I can easily see a one-attempt-only law being passed. If a criminal is stupid enough to do it, they deserve the reprecussions thereof.