In Cyberpunk, you were majorly fucked if you were arrested for pretty much anything. Even minor sentences often involved brainburning (Think the Ludovico treatment from A Clockwork Orange and you're not far off) and if you aren't brainburnt you're not better off. Prisons are overcrowded, and wardens put inmates in permanent solitary confinement VR on a regular basis. Nobody wants to do that. The general shittiness of prison in 2020 means that the final option, serving in an Inmate Penal Corps centron, is the least terrifying.

The Inmate Penal Corps is comprised of convict slave-soldiers equipped with explosive collars for compliance. Senior officers sometimes get not to wear them, but this is rare. Each IPC is organized into Centrons, 100-man strong groups that generally have a specialization. Due to South Am vets getting into trouble, jungle fighting centrons are the most common, and therefore in the least demand. Some groups do tend towards multipurpose usage, though.

So what does this mean for Shadowrun? Why, I'm sure Lone Star would love to send out convicts with cortex bombs, light body armor and cheap milsurp assault rifles to the front lines of a conflict for a fee. They wouldn't have to pay the soldiers, they'd make bank in the mercenary market, and it'd be a lot cheaper than just locking up the dissidents/gangers/shadowrunners they catch. It'd be even better if the convicts already have combat-relevant cyberware, as it means you get augged soldiers for free!

I honestly can't see a downside, other than international treaty violations, which I don't think are much of an issue for AA+ corps. So why aren't the Law Enforcement corps taking advantage of this?

I do believe that they are? I mean, that's one thing I haven't read much of, in 4th (IIRC) or in 5th (I JUST re-read all the available books again): What happens when you're caught. I don't think prisons are really ever involved when runners are concerned. Either they need you alive for some purpose, or they have shoot on sight orders.

It makes sense. We have all heard the hearsay about cop killers not being on trial very often, and when you look at stats, they aren't taken alive frequently at all, compared to other crimes. It would be logical to infer this trend of no mercy for those who kill cops/corpsec would only escalate as the value of life drops and the value of the nuyen makes running detention facilities very, very undesirable.

Now for the schmucks who just get caught trying to hack a node because a big time crook offered him four months salary for some data, or leaving a door unlocked for some runners to get in after hours? Those guys face worse then imprisonment. They get fired. They get a criminal SIN. They lose everything, because the house, the car, and the medical bills for their sick wife all dropped them into crippling debt to the corp, which was kind enough to simply garnish 85% of his wage to make the payments. At this point, he has become a liability, and the corp now owns him. Begin IPC cranial bomb surgery.

To fight in what war, against who? Who would pay for such unreliable troops (and considering the cost of cortex bombs, it would be a stiff fee) when there are numerous PMC out there that are more reliable and probably have to charge far less to recoup equipment and training cost?

All the Explosive Penal Brigade would be good for would be mass assaults in a entrenched stalemate battle like Verdun (the last time such troops were widely used was in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s) - a type of battle that hasn't happened in Shadowrun for some 130 years. There might have been some attempts to use POWs like this in the AzAm war, but given the theaters this war happened in I doubt they were great successes. Turning prisoners into living bombs (implaning an internal tank filled with liquid explosives for instance, and fixing a detonator to that) and just letting them go, to swarm back to their units or any other friendlies and then detonating them seems far more likely to succeed, and doesn't need all the infrastructure and kinky bomb collars the Explosive Penal Brigade needs. Plus, all things considered, it probably is cheaper. Overall, the Explosive Penal Brigade is not cost-effective, militarily viable (someone has to keep them in line and all that) and, given the nature of wars in the 6th world, militarily mostly unnecessary.

"Brainburning" as (part of) prisoner rehabilitation is, however, common in Shadowrun (4th Edition's SimDreams and Nightmares and the bits on Horizon in 4th's Corporate Enclaves and Corporate Dossier are more recent, but this goes back all the way to 1st). Burn out all these deviant desires and you have an obedient, happy new drone for jobs where buying actual drones would be too expensive.


No, begin PAB and BTL treatment. Honestly, I don't quite see how cortex bombs can ever be effective like that. They seem more intended to deny your own assets to would-be extractors (your top research guys and everyone above a certain security clearance), not to convert anyone to your service. This never works out well, and in a world where mind-bending magic, computerized brainwashing and brainburning is readily available seems ridiculously crude at best.

Prisons can generate other revenue off non-awakened Runners. I once read about (don't ask me where, I forgot) Deckers being forced to solder components for cyberterminals for 12-14 hours a day (That was in the AGS). There are always the usual things going on, Pit fights and the like, but apart from license plates, what do you guys see as work that can be outsourced to a boatload of prisoners whose main advantages are being non-unionized and cheap as drek ?

Well, sure, prisoners can be monetarized, just look at the penal system of the US (those prison corporations didn't accidentally develop from plantations!). In the US, prisoner labor is used by many companies for low-education, repetitive work (it's usually cheaper than shipping those jobs to Mexico), then there are the famous prisoner work gangs taking care of roads, picking up trash ect. American prisons also do a surprising amount of manufacturing - they can basically do everything a sweatshop in Burma does. Mostly, though, they service the local economy - sewing uniforms for local police, for instance, license plates, and supply local manufacturing with parts, because prison corporations aren't big on international shipping and prisons in America are rarely built adjacent to logistics hubs for obvious reasons.

There's also crazier stuff, like the case of chinese prisons mass-farming items in MMOs and selling them to western customers, or the self-contained prison ecosystems in South America (think "Big Willie"). Additionally, prisoners always have been abused for all kinds of medical testing, from smallpox experiments in England to the Nazis' racial and surgical atrocities to the US' epidemiological experiments with syphilis. Especially in a world like Shadowrun, where consumer surgery is as common as consumer electronics are today, there must be an immense demand for testing these procedures and devices - and that, I think, is where prisoners in Shadowrun would be most valuable to corporations. I'd be interested to see imprisonment rates in Shadowrun, but my guess would be two times the current US population throughout the developed world.

I can see it working as an Ares Entertainment TV show:
"Ten hardened criminals. One Arena. Only one will get out"
The twist: the winner actually gets out but is chased and captured by Knight Errant: "we told you that crime doesn't pay".

I do see one.

These corporations are paid per contract with the metroplex. It's not a totalitarian state so the corporation want to keep it's contract, the politics want to keep their electors so I do not see them trying this unless they could cover their tracks.


So basically, it could be credible IF it was under very specific circumstances and a very narrow scale.

Ten Runners. One gets to be the season's main bounty on Chase - Errant Knight!

Agree, when working for a national government a security corp is enforcing national law not corporate. Pay per head Suicide Squads would be possible if whatever national government whose juristriction you're policing agree. Unlikely in a democracy.

I should point out that there are major problems with using prisoners fitted with explosives as soldiers.

Namely, literally the only thing preventing them from turning around and killing you with the weapons you supplied them with - by beating you upside the head with it if by no other means - is the threat of death by sudden explosion. However, and this is important, you have to actually be able to trigger that collar somehow. That means some kind of signal, and let's consider the possibilities. Obviously, a hardline is out of the line, since you need your shock troops to be more mobile than the length of a stout fiber-optic cable. So it has to be some kind of signal that can be recieved electronically at a distance.

We can rule out acoustic. Battlefields are crazy noisy things, there's no way to ensure reliability - plus, in an emergency, you don't need to be identifying yourself like Captain Picard trying to blow up the enterprise, which is sure to go over well when they attack.
Laser and microwave links can also be ruled out, as there's no way in hell to ensure you'll be able to line up the transmitter on the receiver. That leaves radio.


However, here's the thing. If the signal is transmitted but isn't received because of electronic interference, it does you no good. So you need to set the system up to blow the soldiers up if the collars are jammed, otherwise they will jam their collars and then beat you to death with the butts of their rifles.
The solution to this seems to be a system where you need to actively prevent the explosion once now and then, instead of actively triggering it.

However, in both cases, your primary problem is going to be this: Very quickly, the enemy will realize you're using penal soldiers. If they figure out a way to disable the collars - and they will have incentive to do so - they'll have a huge array of persons, angry and motivated to hurt you, ready to take up arms against you. Even if not, however, they can make entire swathes of your army vanish in an explosive shower of gore just by maintaining signals interference over your camp for long enough that the collars presume the soldiers are in revolt and blow themselves up.

Current figure is a slightly under 1% of the adult population in the US. And about three times as much in parole. To reach such figure, let alone double it, requires very active measures against a wide range of low-level crimes.

Shadowrun have numerous and large barrens areas of lawlessness, which require lawless people in them to be up to their reputation. So I would have rather assumed that less criminals get arrested. On the other hand, incarcerated population can also increase if average time spent in jail increase, because of tougher punishment, or because criminals themselves commit more serious offenses (or both... extra jail time simply for having and using a smartlink?).

Unless of course, in the long-established SR tradition of replacing black people with orks, we finally get as an answer to how the Earth have not yet fallen to the billions of six-ork litters the fact that three-fourths of the ork population doesn't get to reproduce because they're in jail.

Combine that with the fact, that if LS / KE does go into the Z_Zones with five dozen people and the APCs, they would most likely do something placative against the relentless crime there, like rounding up a few dozen probationary citizens and help them to get a brand new (criminal) SIN. Keeps the prisons happy (workforce restored !), keeps the newspapers happy (Big bust against crime in lawless zones !), keeps the citizens happy (Less squatters in the street !), keeps the police happs (New punchingballs, errr training equipment !), even keeps the other gangs in the area happy (New area available where those unlucky slots used to be !).

Everybody (who counts) wins, right ?

Considering the criminalization of living while SINless, that is my assumption, yes. Also, it seems Proteus AG is running its arcoblocks basically on that premise.


High infant mortality? I know, it's a stretch.

My personal explanation of that is that while orks have higher birth rates, they also have higher death rates due to a ~30 year lifespan. It's more likely elves will take over, as they just don't die of age, and can generally afford medical care.

Yeah, that must have sounded like a really dreadful future scenario at some point...


The major problem I see with the classic exploding collar is that the supervisor would need superhuman reflexes and have to watch all his charges at one. Secondly and more specific to Shadowrun, where are you going to send those people? Large-scale land warfare has really grown out of fashion...

Depends, if you treat the listed average life spans as what the word "average" actually means, it would make perfect sense

So, what do you suppose the wireless bonus on a kinky bomb collar is?

It doesn't explode in 2 hours. Also, it glows in a really kinky pink.

It should also show in AR what happens in various scenarios to constantly remind them that they have a bomb around their neck.

So like a display showing one making a run from the guards, and having his head blow up in vivid 3-D, another of a guy trying to take a tool to the collar in an attempt to remove it only to have it blow up.

The collar goes off before you habe thought about disobeying. Wireless makes everything faster.

Instead of happy fun bombs k10 is a more effective cortex bomb since they go berserk and go after anybody. Sure its hell on discipline but a Kali Killteam has a more effective timespan.

Eh. Chemical or disease based coercion is less prone to electronic interference.

If a soldier needs access to some unique drug every 24 hours or they'll die, they won't blow up if their wireless is messed with, but they'll be surprisingly cooperative to those that supply the drug.




-k

Still partial to mindwipe or Personafix Beetles. Can you say Patriot Chip?

Would reduce recidivism too much, who is going to fill the prisons then?

SINless metahumans who existed while SINless/meta?

Yes, but the problem with that is that there's no immediacy. You can't make them suddenly all die should it become necessary to do so - say, if the other side makes it known that they can also supply the unique drug the soldiers need. Or if you need to abandon them to die and run and they figure that out. Or they just decide that they're dead men anyway, so they might as well go down hurting the people they actually want to hurt, IE, you.

Yep, that's the problem even with explosive collars, the wearers have plenty of time growing convinced that their lives are worthless anyway, so they might as well take down the ... who got them into the situation.


@hermit: I couldn't help but think of a couple of hipsters getting beaten up by police for "existing while meta"

Ironically, there's actually much better ways to use inmates in a war.

Instead of slapping explosive collars on them, offer them pardons. if they were SINless, then they get free SINs when they get out, too, and, you know, every other benefit a veteran would receive.

Instead of fatalistic dogs who know they're dead men and are trying to work out how to take you down with them, you get motivated soldiers.