Space Law Overhaul Suggestion

[SkeletalElite]

Allow crime stacking but also make times for individual sentences much lower.

Minor 1-3 minutes medium 3-5, and major 5-8 minutes. This means individual crimes on minor offenses are not bad but major crime doers can get punished harder.

Repeat offender- extra minute each reoffense

Remove Resisting Arrest and add Sparking a Manhunt. Every minute spent chased adds another minute to the final sentence.

[Veloxi]

On 4/10/2019 at 11:21 PM, SkeletalElite said:

Allow crime stacking but also make times for individual sentences much lower.

Minor 1-3 minutes medium 3-5, and major 5-8 minutes. This means individual crimes on minor offenses are not bad but major crime doers can get punished harder.

Repeat offender- extra minute each reoffense

Remove Resisting Arrest and add Sparking a Manhunt. Every minute spent chased adds another minute to the final sentence.

My take on these changes to Space Law.

The Good:

I would like to see more punishment for Repeat Offenders.
The way it's written in Space Law now, they have to commit the exact same crime three times to start racking up penalties.
I'd like to see that be 3 or more incarcerations of any 2XX (or greater) codes.
Get hauled in for 102 Battery as often as you want, no Repeat Offender modifiers ever.
Get hauled in for 202 Assault, then later hauled in on 204 Possession of a Weapon, and then later still hauled in on 207 Robbery, and the Repeat Offender should start applying and stacking.

I do think Sparking a Manhunt is good on paper.
In practice, a manhunt is often conducted for someone already destined for Perma or even Kill On Sight.
In these cases the penalty is obviously a moot point. The time spent on the manhunt is also a point of argument.

I think this idea could be salvaged if Manhunts were defined as the HoS making an announcement,
and the penalty was to double the penalty from the code (1XX = 0-10, 2XX = 10-20, 3XX = 20-30).
Why the HoS would declare a Manhunt over a 1XX code, I don't know. (Hunting for Husky Biggins for a 105?)
But determining if 'Sparking a Manhunt' applies (Did the HoS make an announcement?) and the penalty (What crime sparked the manhunt?) are crystal clear.

The Bad:

Crime Stacking

Security often has a hard enough time getting it right in binary (Did they do it? Yes/No)
Asking them to figure out the number of charges that get stacked seems too far an ask.
Moreover, proof for multiple charges is complicated;

Captain saw you breaking bridge windows; that's an obvious 100 Damage to Station Assets.

Now there are four windows broken, each of the two greytiders say they only broke one.
Captain says she saw one of them hit all four, break two for sure, maybe a third, and the other one broke one for sure and maybe two.
She thinks it was the one in the green jumpsuit who broke two maybe three, but she's not 100% on that.
Just writing this paragraph was a nightmare; now try to parse it and hand out sentences to the greytiders;
while greytiders scream Shitcurity Stacking Charges! ILLEGAL! and a Mime is breaking out of his cuffs in processing
because the damn detective who brought him in a 102 Battery charge left 10 minutes ago without telling anyone anything.

Time Changes

The 1-3, 3-5, 5-8 times are more complicated than 5 per severity level, so I prefer them as they are now.
I think it also gives security more flexibility in terms of soft/hard punishments.
For real jerks, even slapping them with 15 for 300-level violations sometimes doesn't feel like enough.

Remove Resisting Arrest

No, let's keep 109 Resisting Arrest.
I'd like to see it defined as committing 102 Battery or worse for the purpose of delaying or preventing, arrest or brig processing.
That is, breaking cuffs or running away wouldn't be a 109,
but disarming the officer, knocking the officer down, or any worse attack would be a 109.

[Shadeykins]

Crime stacking is a horrible can of worms that should never be opened. Needless complication + easy abuse.

Sparking a Manhunt was already a crime in the past and was abused to the nth degree. It very easily amounts to "security had to find and arrest you, therefore you get charged even if you weren't aware you were under arrest."

Lower times in cells encourages repeat offenses (since each crime matters little, 1-5 minutes isn't even worth sentencing someone over most of the time hence why minor crimes already have an optional warning system).

Repeat offender based off getting brigged again might work, but mostly repeat offender is to deal with that one shit who keeps disarm spamming people.

[Fox McCloud]

There's not many around from "the old days", but back in the day, crime stacking was very much a thing.

 

It had no impact on the low end, but on the high end, it was used as a tool of crappy officers to punish people they really didn't like....orrr just to throw the book at you because they took a personal distaste to your approach for things (ie: you break 3 windows; officer normally would only charge you once, but because he really doesn't like you, for whatever reason, he charges you three time).

Personal bias has no place in space law. We saw the effects of it in the early days, and it had very little positive impact, but a lot of headaches.

 

 

[Calecute]

I wouldn't like crime stacking per se, but I think the idea of time for repeated offender being higher even for different crimes is good.

[bryanayalalugo]

2 hours ago, Shadeykins said:

Repeat offender based off getting brigged again might work, but mostly repeat offender is to deal with that one shit who keeps disarm spamming people.

I also agree, if someone ends up in the brig more than twice, they are clearly a issue to the station.

On that note on Space Law, I think grafitti should be made a minor crime, since it tends to end to be a massive eye sore (e.g. someone writing "shitcurity" all over the brig lobby and the hallway leading to it) and that janitors somehow tends to be incompetent/go missing early on. Not sure how it should be added however, since Vandalism was changed to Damage of Station Assets.

[SkeletalElite]

Perhaps clarification on what constitutes multiple crimes is what's needed. Breaking 3 window panes wouldn't be 3 charges. But breaking a bunch of windows at the bridge, then breaking a bunch at cargo, then going and doing it at RnD would. Additionally certain crimes could be immune to stacking.

Trespass/ BNE/ Major Trespass could limited to one charge per location trespassed/BNEd/major trespassed. So you can't get 3 charges for Major Tresspass for breaking into the bridge 3 times but you can for breaking into the bridge and security and the teleporter.

Non stackable crimes: Narcotics (distribution and possession), weapon and explosive possession, contraband posession. 

[Shadeykins]

5 hours ago, bryanayalalugo said:

I also agree, if someone ends up in the brig more than twice, they are clearly a issue to the station.

On that note on Space Law, I think grafitti should be made a minor crime, since it tends to end to be a massive eye sore (e.g. someone writing "shitcurity" all over the brig lobby and the hallway leading to it) and that janitors somehow tends to be incompetent/go missing early on. Not sure how it should be added however, since Vandalism was changed to Damage of Station Assets.

The change was deliberate because you shouldn't get arrested for drawing with crayon on the floor.

If the person is anything but a civilian, you could always just get them fired.