Someday, we will have a society without crime. Possibly by replacing the humans with robots. Or racoons. I’ve always thought that racoons had unexpressed potential. But in the meantime, we’re stuck with humans, and humans just seem to love committing crimes. Defining what is and is not a crime, catching the people responsible, and trying to deter crime is one of the principle jobs of government. In a society without any sort of centralized government, how can these things be organized?
As far as defining crimes goes, that part is fairly simple. Once the basics are outlined (theft, murder, assault, etc.) the rest can be finetuned through direct democracy. The more logistically challenging parts come from the enforcement end: catching people who have committed crimes, and punishing them once they have been caught.
Let’s look again at our friend Greg from the chapter on civic projects. While we were focusing on an in-depth look at Contribution and Consumption, he was devolving from mildly dishonest to downright criminal. In particular, he has stolen one of Steve’s guitars. Now, this might be a very short story. If the GPS/RFID/other tracking technology we talked about in the Postal System chapter has been realized, all Steve needs to do is reactivate the guitar’s tracking chip, and the various mail sensors in each building will automatically signal an alarm whenever the guitar coems within range. But even without the help of advanced technology, Greg would have difficulty in benefiting from his crime. He would not be able to offer it in the Market, because its unique item code would be registered as stolen. He might be able to keep it for his own use, but in general theft for personal use makes up a much smaller percentage of crimes than theft for sale, and is limited to more universally popular items. He might be able to barter it on the black market, but a black market is far more difficult to organize in a non-currency economy. Under our current system, it is entirely possible for a bookstore clerk to use his legitimate wages to buy a set of stolen car speakers from a theif, and for the theif to use that money to pay his electrical bills. The same cannot be done in a technosocialist economy. If that bookstore clerk wanted to purchase those same speakers from the thief in a technosocialist economy, he would need to barter. He could either steal something himself to offer in trade, or purchase something through the Market at the theif’s request. Either way would be considerably more complicated than a simple cash-for-goods transaction, and leave the otherwise law obiding clerk at risk. The difficulty in transferring value between the legitimate and black markets would significantly stunt the growth of a black market and probably limit it to low-level trading between criminals.
But Greg hasn’t thought all of this through, and he’s stolen the guitar anyway. How does Steve get it back? First of all, he reports the crime. This is done through an aspect of the centralized computer system, similar to the Market or the SNA. He fills in the item(s) stolen, in this case the guitar, and the time frame during which it most likely happened. He knows that the guitar was there when he left to run some errands at 1:30, and he knows that when he came back at 4:30, his lock had been jimmied and his guitar was gone. He enters all of that into the system. The system now notifies Steve’s neighbors and anyone else who might have been in the vicinity of Steve’s apartment during those times that a crime has occured and asks them for any information they might have. One of his neighbors realizes that he saw that Steve’s door was open at 2:30. At the time he assumed that Steve just wanted some fresh air, but now he thinks it must have been the thief. This means that the time window for the theft can be narrowed to 1:30-2:30. This new information is entered into the system.
Now a new character enters the scene. Sam has always loved puzzles, and he’s discovered that he has a talent for solving crimes. He notices this one pop up in the system and decides to investigate. He takes the reduced time window and begins asking people in the neighborhood if they saw a man carrying a guitar in the area between 1:30 and 2:30. He finds a couple of people who say that they saw a man with a guitar around two o’clock, giving him an even narrower time window to work with. He starts looking through security camera footage and casual photos taken at that time and in that area and loaded into people public profiles. Eventually, he finds a picture of a misspelled sign taken on the corner of Vimes St. and Tyler Ave. at 2:03pm that includes a man with a guitar in the background. He now has an exact time for the theft and a picture of Greg. If Greg has pictures of himself posted to his profile, Sam may be able to identify him with facial recognition software. If that doesn’t work, Sam can look through records of previous thefts in the area to see if anyone matching his photo has committed thefts and later been caught. He can try to track Greg through other photos in the area and see if he can follow him back to his living quarters. And if he becomes genuinely stumped, he can simply add all of his information to the crime’s profile including the photo, and hope that he will be recognized by other members of the community. In this case, however, there’s a facial recognition match to Greg’s Profile, and Sam officially accuses Greg of the crime.
Now we get into the courtroom half of our episode of Law and Order: Technosocialism. The perpitrator has been identified, and is now entitled to a fair trial. Sam has entered photographic evidence of Greg leaving Steve’s building with a guitar within the 1:30-2:30 window during which the theft took place. The neighbor who noticed Steve’s open door and Steve himself have entered statements confirming the time window and the theft. Greg has tried to counter with the explanation that he was picking up his cousin’s guitar from the building, and the guitar pictured is not in fact Steve’s. But, while he does in fact have a cousin living in the building and the cousin is persuaded to lie to support Greg’s story, there has never been any record that Greg’s cousin purchased such a guitar through the Market.
As soon as Same made his accusation official, a jury was empaneled. The jury consists of twelve citizens randomly selected from a pool of all adult citizens who have never been convicted of a crime, have never been the victim of a crime in the same class (burglary, in this case), and have no familial, business, or other official relationship with the accused or the victim. The job of the jury is to ask questions of all parties involved, weigh the evidence presented, discuss things amongst themselves, and eventually vote on the guilt of the accused. At one point, one of the jurors asks Steve how he knows that the guitar in the picture is his, and he points to some custom embroidery on the case, done for him by a friend of his. When another juror asks for confirmation of this, the friend in question joins the discussion, confirms that he did the embroidery, and provides a picture of himself with Steve and the guitar case soon after the embroidery was finished. With this added evidence, the jury quickly concludes that Greg is guilty. A vote is taken, in which ten of the twelve jurors must vote guilty to reach a guilty verdict. Thanks to the evidence of the embroidery and the photo found by Sam, the vote is unanymous.
For property crimes such as these, the sentance is based on two factors: the value of the item stolen, and the solve rate of crimes in that category. Let’s say that the guitar’s Consumption Value at the time of the theft was 600Csv, and that 80% of medium-level thefts in Imaginary City are eventually solved. THe formula for the fine Greg revieves would be 600Csv x 2/.8, or 1500Csv. This taking into account of the solve rate ensures that in cases where the solve rate goes down and the percieved risk of getting caught lessens, the punishment for those who are caught increases, hopefully keeping the disincentive the same. In addition to the fine, Greg will recieve a permanent notation of his conviction on his Profile, and a very noticable but temporary flag at the top of his Profile identifying his crime. How long this flag lasts depends primarily on his number of previous property offenses. For very minor crimes such as stealing something of little value or easily repaired vandalism, it might be 30 days for a first offense. But for any significant theft, such as Steve’s guitar, the first offense flag duration would be one year. From there it progresses in powers of two, so that a second offense would flag him for 2 years, a third for four years, and so on. This flag will make it known to all in his social group that he has committed a crime, and make it less likely that people will want to give him their goods through the Market.
One key point that I’d like to make here is that at no point did anyone involved have to go anywhere. One of the most annoying aspects of the modern American system of jury duty is that it generally requires jurors to spend all day at the courthouse waiting to even find out whether they will be selected for the jury. Under this model, they would simply be able to go about their daily business and participate at their leisure. Similarly, no one had to go catch Greg and physically bring him anywhere before he could be punished. One major advantage of punishment through economic and social means rather than restraint of physical freedom is that the offender cannor escape punishment through physical escape.
If Greg wished to appeal his verdict, another jury would be empaneled. Should they rule in his favor, a “tie-break” jury would be empaneled, and the decision of that jury would be final.
So that more or less covers Greg’s punishment. But what about the Contribution earned by those who participated in solving the crime? During the jury voting process, the jurors also vote on which pieces of evidence they felt were most helpful in their decisionmaking. The contributors of that evidence then split a Contribution reward equal to 3/4 of the total value of the fine. This link between the the fine and the Contribution earned by the investigators ensures that it is never profitable for a group of people to stage a crime and then solve it for the reward, because the Consumption value charged to the perpitrator will always outweigh the Contribution earned by the investigators.
So that more or less covers property crimes. But what about crimes against people? They are both much harder to deter with a society’s economic structure and much more detrimental to the citizenry. Investigation of such crimes would be largely similar, with the difference that most theft and property crimes occur in the victim’s absence. By definition, crimes of physical harm to people occur while the victim is present, and the victim may be able to record the incident, making investigation and trial much easier. The difficult part of bodily crimes is the sentancing. Obviously there can be no market value to help us determine damage to a person. The jury in a bodily crime case must determine not only guilt or innocence of the accused but also a number of points in the sentancing formulary. A summary of the sentancing point structure might go as follows:
Severity of Harm:
1pt. Minor injuries, not requiring medical attention
2pts. Minor injuries, requiring medical attention
4pts. Severe injuries, not requiring hospitalization
8pts. Severe injuries, requiring hospitalization
16pts. Severe injuries, potentially fatal
32pts. Death
Intent to cause harm
1pt. Unintended, caused through negligence
4pts. Unplanned but deliberate
16pts. Premeditated
Miscellaneous Factors
10pts. Sexual violence intended or involved
5pts. Primary motivation of bias
10pts. intent to cause psychological harm
Self defense
If the jury finds that the defendant acted in self-defense, points are subtracted according to the appropriateness of the response. For example, if the defendant caused potentially fatal injuries to an attacker when doing less damage was possible and appropriate, he might recieve eight points, in other words sixteen (the damage he caused) minus eight (the damage that would have been justified).
The severity of the punishment is determined by the total number of points accrued. For crimes of less than 5 points, the offender’s Consumption score is increased by the amount required to reduce his ratio by .01 per point. For any crime 5 points or greater, the punishment is more severe: the offender’s ratio is reduced to 1.0 before the .01/pt reduction is made. By ensuring that the offender is left with a ratio of less than one, we impose something similar to a prison sentance: the offender will be limited to the least desireable housing, food, and other neccessities and entirely unable to purchase non-neccessities until he manages to bring his ratio back to parity. For crimes of 25 points or more, or for a second offense above 10 points, the punishment is banishment. The offender is implanted with a transmitter which will cause alarms to sound and possibly incapacitate him should he try to come within the borders of any technosocialist community, and alert anyone traveling outside of those borders that there is a criminal nearby under a sentance of banishment. Those who attempt to reenter the community more than twice while under a sentance of banishment, or who attempt in any way to disable the transmitter are subject to the death penalty.
Those who have been banished may work towards reinstatement by gathering natural resources and doing other work for the community to earn contribution. They must raise their ratio to 1.2, at which point they will be able to present their case to a reinstatement jury. That jury will review the crime and the offender’s actions since banishment and vote on whether he should be allowed to return. It takes the unanymous vote of three consecutive juries to lift a sentance of banishment, and any further infractions will reimpose the sentance permanently.
This leaves one category of crime left, and it is perhaps the most difficult to define or to punish. These are crimes against society as a whole. Crimes that do damage not simply to a single individual, but to the fabric of society itself. Before we get into that discussion, let me make one thing very clear: Speech is never a crime. When I talk about crimes against society, that can never include statements critical of technosocialism, critical of currently enacted policies, or any other form of speech. Freedom of speech is an absolute. But there is a category of actions that might not have one specific victim, but nonetheless hurt society as a whole. I’m referring primarily to corruption, but these may also include pollution, terrorism, and similar crimes. These are incredibly difficult to define a sentancing rubrik for, and I’m inclined to deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Rather than try to define anti-corruption laws which the corrupt will immediately begin trying to circumvent, I think it’s better to simply define corruption as any attempt to subvert a technosocialist system for unfair gain, and leave the determination of whether individual cases meet that criteria up to the jury in a particular case.
A criminal justice system has two primary functions: to punish those who have committed crimes and to protect the rest of society from those with violent tendancies who might do it harm. The most immediate difference that most readers will notice between the current criminal justice system and the one that I am proposing is the lack of incarceration as a punishment. There is very little evidence that those who are incarcerated in our current system are in any way rehabilitated, and having such a large segment of the population incarcerated at any one time is an enormous drain on societal resources. We refer to convicted criminals who have completed their prison sentances as having “paid their debt to society.” But during their time in prison, they have typically contributed nothing to society and have cost society quite a lot of money to house, feed, and guard them. Instead, the technosocialist model creates a literal debt to society that must be paid not simply by punishment but by actual work on society’s behalf. The life of those with a ratio less than one is not an enviable one, and serves the same sort of dual punishment/deterrent role current served by the prison system. And the imposition of banishment on repeat and severely violent offenders ensures their separation from society as surely as keeping them incarcerated does. The different is that rather than taking the worst offenders and making society responsible for their food, housing, and safety, the technosocialist model punishes them by taking away all the benefits and protections of that society. Offenders are made entirely responsible for their own necessities without being able to rely at all on the society they have harmed.
But the most important part of the technosocialist model is that it requires very little dedicated infrastructure or effort. Resources that would otherwise be used for prisons, policestations, courtrooms, etc. can instead be used for the advancement of the rest of society. And that is what technosocialism is all about.