What do you do while in prison? Follow "Sparky's" career!

Manage Your Resources
Maybe Sparky is an unregistered magician, who's turned a shiv into a simple weapon focus and used Tattoo Magic to quicken a few spells on him with some cool prison tats!

Put That Time To Good Use
Prisons are full of people with interesting skills and experiences and lots of time on your hands. With a bit of incentive, you can learn all sorts of little tricks, like Decking, talislegging, and law! Be careful, remember these are the people who got caught!

Meet Friends And Influence People
Sparky went into prison along, now he needs to join a gang. Previous gang affiliation helps, but any connections--especially to the mobs--will make Sparky's life a lot easier! When he's finally a free man again, his gang connections will lean on him, and you bet he'll deliver in case he ever goes back in again!

Add your own.

Make quick friends with the resident Troll smasher as to make his aquantence in other means could prove to be quite uncomfortable.

-Like the back of a volkswagon.

Utilize the extensive prison library to study all sorts of interesting stuff: psychology, folklore and mythology, archeaology, spell design, etc. All sorts of knowledge skills could be learned that when one is released can become useful.

Drek, use that prison library, and the copious amounts of free time to earn yourself a nice doctorate degree (Rank:6 in any particular knowledge skill) and a killer bod (Athletics or Bod increase, anyone?)

Everyone knows that modern prisons are there entirely to make faster, stronger, better criminals. That's why most of the 'Star shoot first and get interrogated later... they don't want to face the competition.

Prisons don't just churn out "better criminals." Some prisoners take the time to get better at a life skill and drop their criminal acts, even after they leave.

Most runners are massively more dangerious than any random prisoner, so would probably not have to worry about soap dropping or working alone in the laundry room. Any good runners makes it very hard for the cops to pin anything on them anyway.

My Uncle spent 5 years in a prison in Kentucky. He told me to do the following to avoid being anyones woman.

On the first day, during lunch, find the biggest, baddest guy in the joint. Once you have found him, attack him and act insane.

Once you have achieved this either through being beaten to a pulp or through victory you will achieve some respect.

My plan (if for some reason I do go) is to spend the time in solitaire.

The difference between a shadowrunner and Andy Dufresne is one is innosent and has certain unique savey, the other is guilty of alot of stuff and has the savey of a player.

My player character would just pay for a top notch lawyer or settle out of court. Failing that his maths SPU would make tax returns easy. Alough I think any character with an essence less than four would probably go on a special wing with special explosive cuffs.

BTW what do they actually do with people with illegal cyberware? Remove it?

Mags would probably get special prisons. Warded walls, astral guards. Maybe a room with no windows and the the bacteria in the walls to prevent astral. Each mage could have a watcher assigned to it, and if they tried to cast spells or go astral the watcher could let the handler know.

They could have some sort of collar that could zap the mage if he tried to use spell casting. Or maybe they leave the mage mask on 24/7. It isn't exactly in-humane.

What about trolls? You wouldn't them in with the GP. They would run a prison, they are practically invulnerable to non cybered/adept humans.

You could put a mage in a ruthium pollymer type hood, but instead of making his head invisible, it projects whats on the outside of the mask, to the inside. Since it is electronic magnification he would be unable to cast spells through it.

Damn thats a good idea.

Depending on how strong your chummers were, I'd consider having my character plan to bust me out (also depending on how long the stint is). If its a matter of something less than a year, I'd probably do the self betterment thing for my character.

Guess it would be a good time to build a new character and utilize the character pool idea.

I like the goggles idea too. Especially from a cost effective point of view. You could still use the ruthenium thing if your running high tech/high level group. To go you one better, you could ship your magically active prisoners off world (a la Fortress II).

Heh, space prison.

You could but that would be inhumane. A ruthyium would let the mage walk around and interact with virtually no impact other than he cant cast spells.

It isn't really inhumane. If the mage insists on opening himself up to the Astral, that isn't the (space) prison's fault.

I think he ment the sack.

Ah, Prison...there's a lot to be said about prison, but the most interesting thread that showed up was what would happen to magically active prisoners...you better
believe that the gov will do all it can to make the mage/shaman/adept-whatever "see the light" and work for them...afterall, magicians being such a rarity they are highly sought after prizes, much like the "hackers" of the nineties..you know, those 16 year old kids who hacked AT&T or the Pentagon and got nabbed, only to be offered "consulting" jobs afterward by their captors.

As for the rest of us mundane-types, Prison is a rampant testing ground (today) of psychological warfare strategies (like the women's prison in Lexington, KY that got shut down by Congressional order when it was revealed that political prisoners were being tortured with mind-control tactics to see if their minds could be "changed"). The prison industry is the fastest growing industry in the United States (at least it was in '99). The trend now is privatization, where corps take over the prison and turn it into a sweat shop. Anyone like a shadowrunner caught by the gov or the corp or whomever would be far too valuable to be put into a sweat shop....that's where all those low-level thugs go, the typically black youths.

You'd better believe that they'd be out on work-release real quick....

As of last year, the largest growing employer area is higher education. I guess that's a good sign...

SotA64 mentions a prison built by Mitsuhama which they placed upon a mana-warp. I suspect, especially since the Kilimanjaro Solution, that the corps will be building more such prisons using powerful magic to create such magic poisoned zones. The poster mentions the prolonged effects of exposure to the warp, which, as one might expect, are unpleasant.

Thats harsh. My idea is a lot cheaper. Though a good point was brought up. If only 1% of the pop is magically active... how many prisoners are you going to have that are mages? can't imagine many.

There are currently 2 million Americans in prison. That's about 20,000 awakened when magic comes back - and I don't buy into a "less will fall into crime" mentality, not in SR anyway. Besides, you also want to make it harder for magic to be used in jail breaks, which a mana-warp certainly does. Building a prison where you've performed massive magical rituals is cheaper than using a single ward and maintaining it. It's dual purpose: otherwise poisoned land is now "marked" and performing revenue generating services. You can actually hire mundane guards for the prison and yet charge full awakened incarceration prices.

You could just replace their eyes with cyber eyes using elctronic magnification or specifically designed to not allow magic...

Most cyber can be disabled with minor surgery. Exceptions include boosted reflexes (irreversible treatment), bone lacing (its passive material in your bones) and much bio wear. Some items would not be bothered with, smart links re useless in the clink (where are you going to get a gun. The guards all have smart link ID systems. Also any non combat cyber (even tactical computers) would likely not be bothered with, communications cyber would be disabled however.

I created a character with a police record flaw. And he was ex TRG (Australian SWAT). We worked out what could be turned of and what couldn’t. he was being dosed with the drug that reduces your initiative dice and he was still about 8+3d6 initiative with 8 or 9 body dice to resist damage good unarmed combat so the GM decided the ex cop was sent to general population. Trouble makers where quietly told to make a mess of him and in a few weeks he was left a lone and the prison officials had several less trouble makers. The prison officials did not bother to take action against my character because they didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that they had put a cop (or somebody still that dangerous) in general population. Got to love a corrupt privet prison. He still got out early based on good behaviour.

On the subject of awakened criminals.

If 1% of the population is awakened less than 1% of prisoners will be. Wether you want to admit it or not a fare portion of prisoners had some difficulty making the level of income thy wanted legitimately so they turned to crime purely for the money. Any awakened person can get a very good job just by tuning up to any corporation or government and asking. He will reserve training and employment for the rest of your life. Some don’t want to do this but it is not an option to many of the mundanes. Of cause there will still be enough to warrant special consideration for them.

Edward

However, I would say that, at most, only a third are mages. There's also adepts and shamans.

Actually, I think that the people who awaken in prison would very soon become test subjects for whichever corp pays the prison the most money.

Yes, they're awakened, but how many of them are going to be able to cast a decent spell without being taught it? Come to think of it, how many of them (excepting shamans who get paid a dream visit by their totem) would even know what they're capable of?

Admittedly I imagine that with emotions running high in a prison some of them would spontaneously cast something low level, but I doubt they'd all suddenly start throwing around fireballs left and right.

All it'd take would be some bright corp exec to realise that anyone could awaken and they'd be shipped out pretty damned quick.

I think saying 20k people in jail will be awakened because thats %1 of the pop is awakened seems unlikely.

People with magic who commit crimes are probably less likely to go to prison. The nature of magic making it easier for them to illude capture. At least IMHO.

...not to mention less likely to risk time in jail considering many of them can earn big bucks without even breaking a sweat.

"Let's see, murder some guy with a manaball after a week or two of intel and setting up an ambush for 5,000¥ and risk a death sentence in prison, OR take a cozy job creating wards at 10,000¥ a day in order to live a life of luxury... Ooh, decisions, decisions."

Sadly, most don't get approached with the option of those cushy jobs. Plus, we still have a problem with individuals choosing to make their own choices.

The best solution would be to put all the prisoners in tiny stacked cubicles, about 7' x 2' x 1' , smaller for dwarves and larger for trolls. Give them an IV drip and a trode rig connected to a central server. Less spent on food, less spent on space, and the prisoners still get the same experience, no need for more than 2 guards, a nurse, and on call computer technician. It works for mages, physads, cybered, and mundanes alike. Only otaku would present any problem.

[QUOTE] Sadly, most don't get approached with the option of those cushy jobs. Plus, we still have a problem with individuals choosing to make their own choices.[QUOTE]

Even if you want to be your own boss a mage has it made. Throw an add in the local rag advertising wards charge 90 nuyen an hour 60 hous a month will pay for medium life style. If you want to stay off the system for some reason sell wards or watcher spirit patrols to criminals (ever bothered to ward your dos as a shadow runner. I am thinking of doing this)

As to the otaku in juvenile hall. They will not be able to bypass security because the lock controls will not be assessable. The cameras will show that somebody is tampering with an access panel and security will show up and drag him of to whatever they do to kids that try to break out.

Edward