 September 21, 2014 - 12:52am | Below is all that I can find. Please post anymore that you know of. Prisons of the Frontier: Cassidine system, Canberra planet – The 3rd moon is a penal colony. Theseus system, Oedipus planet – This is a large, frozen world with a dense atmosphere of methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide. A monitoring station, Creon, is located on the northern hemisphere. A penal colony, Jocasta Base, is also nearby. Athor system, Yast planet – Solace is one of the more infamous supermax prisons of the UPF, it was made from hollowing out a gigantic mesa in the southern hemisphere of Athor (I) well away from anywhere. Tremedous defenses protect Solace from the outside and crack companies of Star Law Correction Officials man the stations inside. Also, it is not uncommon for Landfleet to have units passing through for desert training staying in and around Solace. If, somehow, a creature could make it through all of the security defenses in place, they would still have the desert to deal with once they got outside. Truly a forbidding place. |
 October 24, 2014 - 5:36pm | My read on Star Law and sathar agents is that they get the gulag/Gitmo treatment and are never released as its too dangerous when there is the possibility of sathar hypnotism involved. Therefor as Star Law succeeds their need for larger and larger prison facilities will grow. Individual colonies will have varying needs for prisons based on the legal systems, societal pressures (over population, unemployment, philosophical and moral codes of the population, and so on), economy and the ability of the government to pay for its penal system- I can see light and medium population planets going with work gangs or similar while a High pop world that was feeling the fiscal pinch might resort to earlier release of prisoners from jail. Its really going to be a patch work. Pretty sure I wouldn't want to end up in a prison on Outer Reach. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 25, 2014 - 3:07am | I don't think the prisons would grow except in response to activity. Just like today, they would calculate how much room they will need based upon longevity of the prisoners and how much criminal activity takes place on average in a decade and how fast that activity is increasing over the decades, if at all. This would be offset by budgets about how much it costs to feed and clothe the prisoners, maintain the facilities and pay the employees. Prison overcrowding today is based on the two factors indicated above: increase in criminal activity and budget cuts. Thus, in an economic boon, prison overcrowding does not exist, while in an economic crunch prison overcrowding becomes a concern. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 October 25, 2014 - 5:12am | Increase in criminal activity is based on what is considered a crime. We might expect to see prison overcrowding go down or end in Colorado and Washington states since they legalized marijuana. How to punish a crime also effects prison population. The web site below lists animal cruelty laws by state. You can see some are only a fine while others are a felony for the same crime. http://www.aspca.org/fight-cruelty/advocacy-center/state-animal-cruelty-laws
Since we have four major races and many different planets the laws, prisons, and law enforcement are going to vary extremely widely. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
October 25, 2014 - 6:19am | Good point. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 October 25, 2014 - 11:33am | And since life span is a factor, we have to remember that Frontier races live a long time. e.g. If you're playing anywhere in the timeline after the first sathar war, you have to remember that for a significant portion of the population, that war wasn't something they read about in a history text but rather something they lived through. They will have personal memories. This means that beings have a lot of time to be repeat offenders and that life sentences are something that last up to a couple hundred years. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 October 27, 2014 - 12:20pm | Prisons of the Frontier need not meet our sensibilities either... some could be places with high death rates, slave labour camps, places that people disappear to never to return... who knows what horror await the convicted, others might be more like what we know. I am more given to interpreting the individual worlds & corporate worlds running their own systems of law & justice with only a very few UPF specific facilities & laws followed by all... Star Law to me is something akin to interpol in my thinking... in short Star Law deals with the things all the races know they might need help dealing with, but if a planet can do it by themselves they will. Star Law is over worked more than likely and spread thin. Companies & Colonies clearly prefer no UPF interference in my thinking, this is just how I see the Frontier... a frontier fledgling sort of place, in which Star Law could get into conflicts with Local LEO's just like the US Marshal & Sheriffs did in the old west. So prisons are either local places or far away Star Law places. I think a Gitmo type place would exist for Sathar Spies/Terrorists also there would be places for the criminally insane too. Just saying history tells us how prisoners are treated good & bad. Punishment is often what a culture can afford to do... prisons do not exist historically in economies/societies that can not afford you to sit in jail... they kill, fine, beat you, enslave you but do not waste resources on people behind bars as they can not afford the luxury of babysitting bad people... just a thought on punishment through history. So the question of prison is what works for each planet? And what does not work... I do like the reconditioning and personality erasing ideas as well. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
October 27, 2014 - 3:20pm | Excellent thoughts. Considering the economics of it, it would clearly be colonies with strong economies that would have offworld prisons, along with the UPF and Star Law. It seems likely that smaller or poorer colonies would be as you describe. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 December 5, 2015 - 4:44am | Quick bit about "canon": Zeb came out under the SF name, with the full blessing of TSR (unleass it was later repudiated explicitly which I am not aware of). It therefore is canon to some degree. If one wants to house rule around parts of it that's fine. It's your game. (I know I'm not hewing to a strict Zeb line in mine, or even a strict AD line.) But let's not kid ourselves that it's AU to the canon. Now as for the UPF. It may have started off as strictly a mutual defence pact, but obviously it would grow and change as the needs of the Frontier changed, taking on issues of interstellar law (like piracy), tamping down on corporate warfare, etc. Throughout the years, it retains a strong respect for planetary sovereignty so long as planets keep their issues confined to their own worlds. When an issue spills off-world and starts dragging in other planets (or is between two planets to begin with), then the UPF steps in. Obviously there would be a need for at least one prison for "Federal" offences (the aforementioned pirates, Sathar agents, etc). I can also see the UPF offering prison space to planets for criminals who are too dangerous to be left on-world, to serve as rallying points for sedition, etc. The best example out of game of the UPF I can think of is probably the Interstellar Alliance from B5. Something more than a mere "super UN", but less than Star Trek's Federation (though I see it inevitably growing in that direction). |
December 5, 2015 - 8:43am | So how many prisons do we have local and federal? And what does "penal colony" really mean in Frontier language... does that mean a local prison more or less like today are these run by business or government or is there a mix of that (like today, and if business is running them that can be a way to make money, as a business you want to grow see profits increase pay off the facilities... so once a business where is the profit in getting less prisoners?) or does it mean a "colony" of people sent to some god awful place to scratch and claw survival out of the land with brutal rules while the government tells everyone it is a new start for the malcontents and a good life? Are some Penal Colonies actually nice? What about the insane? As to the government/power structure of the Frontier on a large scale I think it is good to share our interpretations but each ref will have their own vision on how this is. From a dark to light future and inbetween. There is enough in the materials produced by TSR to go either direction or inbetween and then flesh it out as each sees fit. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
December 6, 2015 - 11:21am | Remembering that Austrailia and the State of Georgia both started as penal colonies some are not that bad. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
December 7, 2015 - 9:35am | They were when they started, rat. Think about the types of people that get sent to such places. |
December 7, 2015 - 1:48pm | Oh I do. But you must remember the times they lived in. Minor crimes were punished a little heavier and many of the prisoners were in for not paying debts. Some of it also had with the overpopulation of London the world's largest city at the time. Plus there were some who volunteered otherwise you would not have had women and children they just didn't get enough volunteers. Also one of the reasons Georgia got penal colony status was they needed people to act as a buffer to stop Indian attacks into the Carolinas. Since by definition these people would need to be armed the crimes they were sent there for were not murder and rape or any of the other really violent and cruel ones. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
