Crime and punishment.

[Ares Land]

I was researching ideas for how police could work in various conworlds, or how crime and punishment would be handled, and I thought, hey, maybe this is of general interest!

Two questions which might be of interest:

- How is crime handled in your conworld? How do trials work? What punishments can be enacted?

For the Tarandim cultural sphere: the local mara has both judicial and police powers. Being mara is an honor conferred, generally, to a local military veteran, although there are other, more intellectual ways to be elevated. It works as more or less hereditary nobility (that is, it's not hereditary by right; but the position tends to be inherited anyway: children of mari have access to the career tracks that lead to mara-hood. The position is halfway between European feudal lord and Chinese district magistrate (with hints of the Byzantime theme system).

- How should justice, police and crime be handled in an ideal society?

I have ideas about this one... but still much at the research stage. For a short story (and possibly several, if the ideas are good enough) I need a way to convincingly portray a police/judiciary system that is plausibly more advanced than our own.
(Science-fiction can be disappointing on this one. Law enforcement is often portrayed as a little medieval, and there's an awful lot of shoving people through airlocks)

[Pabappa]

- How is crime handled in your conworld? How do trials work? What punishments can be enacted?

Many of my societies simply do not understand the concept of crime. Every adult ... men and women both ... is expected to defend themselves and their property, and there is nobody to call on for help if they are attacked. Note that on this planet, men and women are similar in stature, and in some societies, women are reliably taller.

In most societies with this structure, children and pregnant women are protected from assault in various ways, but it is still not a crime to attack a young child ... instead, the victim's parent or a close relative is expected to immediately take revenge on the assailant.

Many of the societies with this structure are small, materially poor, close-knit societies living in a compact area. However, the model of a society without crime survived into the very climax of civilization and competed against the more structured societies such as the Moonshines and the Soap Bubbles.

Indeed, it can be said that the non-judicial model eventually won out, in the sense that, after the collapse of world civilization, it was the descendants of the Zenith tribe who held the reins of power over most of the world's land. The Zeniths were the most extreme example of all non-judicial societies, in that even treason was legal, so a group of Zeniths could maintain membership in the tribe and receive their social benefits, all while planning an organized military assault on the wider Zenith nation. However, on the contrary, the Zeniths were so unstructured that they did not prevent the construction of traditional societal groupings under their umbrella, and soon there arose groups of Zeniths who restored the concept of laws, crime, and judicial punishments.

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As for the Moonshines: to summarize a long writeup succinctly, I'll reduce it to the two most eye-catching points:
1) Small children as young as age 5 can be charged with a crime, and can be imprisoned just as easily as can any adult. The parents cannot defend the child in such a case, and although the parents of a young criminal are often charged with neglect, conviction of the parents does nothing to exonerate the child.

Children's prisons resemble, and are often attached to, orphanages. There, the children are kept safe, and ideally healthy, but are made to work from sunrise to sunset to cover, as best they can, the cost of their care. Unlike orphans, however, children convicted of a crime cannot leave their prison until their sentence is up; even if all of the town's orphans find adoptive families, the children will remain out of reach of those seeking to adopt.

2) The Moonshines typically punish men about ten times more severely than women when both are convicted of the same crime. Furthermore, there are many crimes that only apply to men; for example, whenever a woman divorces her husband, the husband must immediately remarry, flee into the wilderness, or else be charged with the crime of trespassing; unmarried men simply are not allowed to live within Moonshine's towns and cities. All judges are female. This skewed system is one reason why the adult population of Moonshine settlements consistently has such a strong female majority.

[Ares Land]

Every adult ... men and women both ... is expected to defend themselves and their property, and there is nobody to call on for help if they are attacked. Note that on this planet, men and women are similar in stature, and in some societies, women are reliably taller.

That's a nice, efficient take! Though I suppose after a time protection networks would build up again?

As for the Moonshines: to summarize a long writeup succinctly, I'll reduce it to the two most eye-catching points:

Nicely dark and nasty; and I like the subtle gender role inversion.

[Pabappa]

A bit more on the Moonshine criminal justice system .... I've decided to get rid of the three-branch and two-branch ideas that i had borrowed from the US checks and balances system, and just have a unitary top-down government in which the courts and prison system are separate from each other, and belong to two different departments of the executive branch of government (which is essentially the only "branch" left). This means that prisons can disobey the courts to some extent, but more on that later.

Children as young as five years old can be charged with a crime, and the parents of such a child are nearly always arrested as well, as the general understanding is that criminal activity in childhood is proof of child abuse. Furthermore, any children left without parents to take care of them are considered orphans and are not allowed to move to a different relatives' house; they thus are forcibly moved to an orphanage in which they are forced to work and where living conditions are little better than in a prison. This means the siblings of a child who is arrested are effectively also arrested, and the house where they lived becomes vacant and its ownership is transferred to the state.

Thus, it happens that outside parties will entice small children to commit crimes with the intent of destroying their entire family. Young children are not considered reliable witnesses, and though they are offered a ceremonial opportunity to testify in their defense, the judge typically ignores the child's words and pays attention to their emotions, if not ignoring them altogether. A young child who seems not to understand what they have done will lead the judge to suspect that they were enticed, and therefore not guilty after all; also, the law requires that small children be tried before the judge who is most intimately familiar with their family and acquaintances, and therefore most likely to know who might have a hidden motive to destroy the family.

Once imprisoned, the children (and adults) are free from the court system, and some are fortunate enough to fall under the watch of sympathetic guards, who can void the punishment entirely and release them back into the free world. However, in the case of small children, this often does not work well because the guards watching over the children are not typically in contact with the guards watching over the child's parents, and although the prison system can void the punishment handed to them by the court system, they cannot void the verdict itself, and therefore the parents will remain legally guilty of child abuse even if the child is set free. Thus, for all practical purposes, children who are set free from their prison sentences remain orphans, and because prisons for children are often set within orphanages, the children may even remain in the same building they were originally sentenced to, the only change being that they are now eligible for adoption into a new family.

[Creyeditor]

The Kobardon speaking people of Fredauon generally classify the judical systems of Fredauon according to their complexity when dealing with punishment and reward. Very simple systems only distinguish between punishable and non-punishable actions. In more complex systems some actions are also rewarded. In even more complex systems abstaining from an action can be rewarded or punished. In the most complex systems, keeping someone from performing an action or making someone perform an action can also be punished or rewarded.

The basic idea is based on the five categories of Ahkam in Islam.

[Foolster41]

In Saltha, crime is defined as an act that takes from, either rights or possessions from another person, so justice is more restorative than punitive. Both plaintiff and defendant state their cases and bring witnesses before a panel of judges (typically 5), and then the judges deliberate.

If the defendant is found to be innocent of wrong doing (didn't steal something for example), and it's clear the plaintiff made the charges in good faith, the plaintiff must pay legal fees. If it's found the plaintiff was malicious, they will take the punishment given if the defendant was found guilty.

Prisons are not used as punishment, and incarceration is only for those who are flight risks who would try to skip out on paying their debt.

The most common punishment is paying a fine, usually a multiple of whatever loss (2x what was stolen, 2x paying for hospital bills and wages lost)
Those who cannot afford a fine must pay off their debt in forced labor (by law they earn a fair payment for their work, more strenuous work pays more)

However in cases of repeat offenses, or violent offenses, a guilty person may be given corporal punishment.
For adults, they are whipped across the back with a who that has a five unbarbed (they aren't barbarians!) strips of leather.
For children (those between 10 and 15) may be instead switched across their exposed bottoms
Saltha has a law of minimal punishment, not allowing more than 20 strokes with the whip or switch, and possibly less depending on age or sex.

Those under 10 generally are given to their parents to be punished, and the parents are responsible for any punishment. But they may be switched by the government if they are guilty of violent crime, or are repeat offenders multiple times in a short period of time.

Execution by either exile (a mark given that denies access to cities, and throw in to the desert) or execution by beheading with a sword is reserved for first degree murder, rape, sexual molestation of a minor or treason.

[hwhatting]

This is something I posted in a survey on the death penalty in our concultures on the old board. It also touches on the questions raised here:

Name of con-country: Sa Tauta - a loose confederation of small kingdoms, monastic republics, and city states. Rules and practices vary, but there are cultural communalities
Is capital punishment legal? In principle, it's legal across the Tauta.
Is capital punishment in active use? Some of the monastic republics practise it very sparingly, the Southern city states and many kingdoms practise it frequently.
What crimes are punishable by death, if any? Banishment is the most popular punishment even for very grave crimes, but violation of banishment is normally punishable by death - this is almost exclusively the reason for capital punishment in those monastic republics that practise it sparingly. Crimes are generally divided into private crimes and crimes against the community. Private crimes are only prosecuted if the victim or his/her clan demand it; the death penalty here means giving the victim or the clan the right to kill the perpetrator. This can happen in cases of murder or manslaughter, the principle is "an eye for an eye"; crippling or maiming, rape or other violations of a woman that result in her becoming infertile. Crimes against the community that can carry the death penalty are treason, arson that effects communal buildings or several homes, poisoning of wells or communal meals, witchcraft and blasphemy if they affect the community, injuring or killing (or attempts to do so) directed against community officials or persons under special protection (guests, pilgrims, travellers on public roads, envoys, hostages, communal wards). In the Southern city states, which have a mixed Tauta and non-Tauta population and a public law tradition influenced by Roman law, also some private crimes can be publicly prosecuted and individual statutes / laws can foresee the death penalty for individual violations.
Is the death penalty mandatory for any crimes? In general, Tauta legal conventions don't foresee mandatory sentences, but allow the communities wide leeway to punish (or not) depending on the individual case. The Southern city states know mandatory sentences (mostly penalties, beating, and banishment), but normally have the death penalty only as a more severe option.
How frequently is it applied? The range goes from almost never in some of the monastic republics to several executions a year in the Southern city states.
Are there any restrictions on who can be put to death? There are no formal limitations - to be punished, you need to (1) have committed the act and (2) either have done so maliciously or threaten the community. If these conditions apply, punishment, including capital punishment, can be applied also to children and the mentally ill and even to animals or other entities with a legal person (spirits, demons, holy trees or wells, etc.)
What methods of execution are used? The most usual method for private killings is with a blade (axe, sword, knife, spear), for public executions beheading or garroting by an executioner; in some cases that produce high outrage, the convict is killed by stoning or clubbing, with the entire community participating in the killing. Other methods are sometimes used - quartering by horses is a traditional means of execution for treason and attacks on royalty in the Northern kingdoms, sometimes "poetic justice" punishments are imposed (immolation for arsonists, poisoning for poisoners, etc.)