I doubt they even take prisoners in the first place. They probably execute anyone they think is a threat.
Prisons in Star Trek.
- Thread starter Yevetha
- Start date
I doubt they even take prisoners in the first place. They probably execute anyone they think is a threat.
The ENT-era Section appeared downright civilized, asking rather than telling, using voluntary intermediaries rather than abusing them.
The DS9-era Section... Might not even exist. We only ever saw one operative (plus a few people on a holodeck, which establishes nothing much) who may or may not have been part of an unofficial organization, but hardly differed in his modus operandi either from regular SF Intelligence - or from the con artist of "Devils Due"!
Timo Saloniemi
The DS9-era Section... Might not even exist. We only ever saw one operative (plus a few people on a holodeck, which establishes nothing much) who may or may not have been part of an unofficial organization, but hardly differed in his modus operandi either from regular SF Intelligence - or from the con artist of "Devils Due"!
Timo Saloniemi
Though if not for war crimes, what would she stand trial for?
^ And the Federation is not guilty of genocide, so we won't even go there. The Founder leader is. She ordered the extinction of an entire species (the Cardassians). The Federation has never done that - not even against those that were a deadlier threat, such as the Borg.
During the entire Dominion War, the Federation attacked legitimate military targets according to established, universal, obvious rules of war - rules which should not, and will not, change. The same cannot be said for the Dominion.
During the entire Dominion War, the Federation attacked legitimate military targets according to established, universal, obvious rules of war - rules which should not, and will not, change. The same cannot be said for the Dominion.
I think a case could be made that Kirk, at least, invented his own prisons. Kahn was left on a planet, as was Mudd (with his shrewish android wife). In this light, Kirk personally liked to isolate criminals, rather than "punish" them. In another instance, Cyrano Jones was essentially ordered to make restitution.
On the other hand, we hear several times in TOS that there's still a death penalty (for visiting Talos IV, and for murder "The Ultimate Computer.") Personally, I far prefer the other TOS Starfleet and Federation we saw, where treatment and rehabilitation were emphasized over punitive action.
I accept brigs as holding cells, but surely we will have other alternatives to prisons in 300 years?
On the other hand, we hear several times in TOS that there's still a death penalty (for visiting Talos IV, and for murder "The Ultimate Computer.") Personally, I far prefer the other TOS Starfleet and Federation we saw, where treatment and rehabilitation were emphasized over punitive action.
I accept brigs as holding cells, but surely we will have other alternatives to prisons in 300 years?
Rehabilitation was largely abandoned in the US back in the 1970's, statistically it just didn't work. There were some success stories, but recidivism remained too high.
Looking at the example of Harry Mudd, it doesn't work in the future either.
Penal colonies might bear a more fashionable label, but they're still prisons.
That's certainly definitive. One man manages to break the laws again after being punished, therefore the entire system must not work.
Looked pretty cut-rate to me.
A better question may be: What sort of future do we want?
What do we on this planet, right now, want to work toward?
Warehousing of offenders -- by far in America disproportianately poor and black, and largely based on drug offenses?
Or do we foresee a better answer 300 years from now -- a better answer we cannot even perceive at the moment, when race and income (and even humanoid species labels) will mean nothing, and we share the best of our resources with all?
I'm sorry, but if you answer "no," then in my view you completely betray the concept of "Star Trek," at least as portrayed by TOS. We are neither better nor worse than those we imprison.
The future will judge us by how we treat our least fortunate.
What do we on this planet, right now, want to work toward?
Warehousing of offenders -- by far in America disproportianately poor and black, and largely based on drug offenses?
Or do we foresee a better answer 300 years from now -- a better answer we cannot even perceive at the moment, when race and income (and even humanoid species labels) will mean nothing, and we share the best of our resources with all?
I'm sorry, but if you answer "no," then in my view you completely betray the concept of "Star Trek," at least as portrayed by TOS. We are neither better nor worse than those we imprison.
The future will judge us by how we treat our least fortunate.
It is the representation the criminal justice system in the 23rd century that we were given. If you include the animated series, we saw Harry Mudd three times, he was a career criminal in every encounter. 24th century Tom Paris wasn't displayed as "changed" by his time in the pokey. He didn't seem in the least to view his former actions as in anyway wrong, or regretful. He simply wasn't happy that he was caught.
A future where people live by the rule of their own laws perhaps.
Or a future where a select group of people (criminals) casually break any law they personally don't agree with?
Maybe I missed something, why would drug offenders be excluded from prison time?
Of course drugs are in no way connected to things like domestic violence, battered women, battered children, sexual assault, rapes (drugs play a role in 62 percent of all sexual assaults). Drug use is closely linked to robberty and property crime.
Yes drugs are truly "victim-less"
When did Star Trek step away from the concept of justice?
"At least as protrayed in TOS," what about TNG and Picard? There's a man who believed in the law, In one episode, he utilized the prime directive to shut down a inter-planetary drug trafficing business. Not that one of the species in that episode were drug addicts right? Because drugs are "victim-less"
We could protect the less fortunate, by removing those in society who would victimize them, and placing those individuals in prisons.
One possible solution.
Oh, yes, we will. If it's crime when by A, it should be crime when by B, too. And the charge in both cases would be "attempted": the Founder never managed to kill all the Cardassians, despite trying her damnedest, and the Federation never managed to kill all the Founders, despite trying their damnedest.
What sort of utter rubbish is that? Rules of war change more or less daily. Take a war, any war. Take warriors from any preceding or following war and have then assess the rules followed in the example war. Witness utter condemnation.
Indeed, officers and men alike from the Hundred Years War would find WWII barbaric to the extreme, and devoid of any sort of recognizable rules. And rightly so, because there certainly has not been any sort of progress in the matter. All sorts of change and development, but not one iota of progress. And no sign of hope. Frankly, I'd much rather take my chances with Henry V (as an officer, trooper or civilian, for or against or neutral) than with the lawless brutes guiding the English (or any other) armies today.
We can only hope that the UFP of the Star Trek future would be at least marginally better. Well, Kirk did wage war at stun...
But that's just it - it does work with Mudd.
Rather than brainwash Mudd into a person incapable of any and all crime-like action, and thus a total cripple, the Federation penal system apparently manages to wash specific crimes out of him. He's never a repeat offender on any of them!
- No "operating a ship without a master's license" (he does fly a shuttlecraft later on, but he has Chapel's license pocketed at the time!)
- No "smuggling"
- No "using counterfeit money"
- No "pushing illegal drugs"
- No "selling rights to technologies without obtaining those rights first"
He did sell Starfleet Academy later on, but that was because Kirk hadn't delivered him to Federation justice.
That's a successful system, preserving a man's innovative spirit while preventing his specific offenses from inconveniencing the society again.
Timo Saloniemi
That was a Section 31 plot. Not the Federation.
Federation probably gets the blame, though.
Yevetha
Commodore
Does section 31 has its own laws on how to deal with criminals?
Everybody does. It's just a matter of hierarchy: the UFP supposedly has the final say on everything, and if you disagree with that, you are subjected to sanctions. Section 31 no doubt feels it has the final final say, but it's much more difficult to impose sanctions if you try to remain covert!
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
I'm fairly certain that an organization whose stated goal was to exterminate ethnic and religious groups it defined as "inferior" in the process of violently conquering as much territory as it could would look very different to a 23rd Century Federate than an organization whose stated goal is to protect the rights and liberties of all citizens against encroachment and violations from the state, even if that 23rd Century Federate thinks the latter organization's idea of what rights those citizens had were not expansive enough.
It is simply not reasonable to say that there's any value system were genocide and imperialism look the same as defending civil rights and liberties.
No, it did not. Agents of a criminal conspiracy called Section 31 attempted genocide, without the knowledge or authorization of the Federation government. To ascribe the actions of that criminal conspiracy to the Federation government just because the members of that criminal conspiracy are Federation citizens is about as sensible as ascribing the actions of the Gambino crime family to the United States President just because John Gotti was a United States citizen; it's so nonsensical as to border on the dishonest.
Wrong again. The exact lines are as follows:
In other words, no, Sisko does not disagree that Dukat will be tried for war crimes; in fact, he confirms that Dukat will be tried by noting that Dukat is legally innocent until proven guilty of the crimes of which he stands accused. Sisko simply refrains from offering his opinion as to whether or not Dukat is guilty of war crimes.
Evidence? It seems to work well in most cases in countries like Norway.
One example disproves an entire system? C'mon. There will always be outliers.
Quoted for sanity.
And it's not enough to draw conclusions about the system's effectiveness--except insofar as we know that crime is virtually unheard of on Earth, which itself implies that the rehabilitation system must be more effective than this one example would imply. In other words: Harvey Mudd is just an outlier, that's all.
Certainly the rule of law is a good thing. But that doesn't justify all measures taken by law enforcement, judicial, and penal authorities, either.
For a number of reasons, including:
1. Those laws are illegitimate, because they violate the natural right of adults to imbue any substance they chose and control their own bodies, and because they are hypocritical--some addictive substances are "okay," and others are banned, and their actual social effects and health consequences are irrelevant. There's no sense in a system where tobacco is legal and cannabis is illegal.
2. These are mostly nonviolent, victim-less crimes, and it is irrational to waste limited resources imprisoning people for nonviolent crimes that have no victims. Prosecutors routinely decide whom to prosecute or not, irrelevant of whether or not someone has broken a law, on the basis of the severity of the law, and judges routinely decide whom to imprison, or not, and for how long, depending on the severity of the crime. This is nothing new. All crimes are not equal, and all crimes are not deserving of imprisonment.
3. Most of the so-called "war on drugs" has functioned as little more than a new system of Jim Crow, a modern American apartheid system. Even though drug use occurs at similar rates amongst the middle and upper classes, and amongst whites, laws against drug use are disproportionately enforced against the poor and blacks -- especially since, in a capitalist economy that routinely excludes about 5% of the population from real economic opportunity, the drug trade is all they can turn to if they want to survive. They are, in fact, often used as excuses by police departments to arbitrarily target and threaten Americans whose skin happens to be the wrong color, and are then used to help private companies which run prisons profit off of increased incarceration rates. They are nothing more than a way for the white power structure in America to continue to oppress blacks.
The war on drugs is illegitimate, unjust, classist, and racist. Period.
It never did, which is no doubt why it does not depict Earth or the Federation has having a war on drugs, a prison-industrial complex, or a racist judiciary.
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How much responsibility can you place at the feet of the Federation, for the actions of the people (section 31) who are inside of it's bounderies?
If S31 were just a criminal organization, some responsibility would still go to the Federation for not exercizing control over what should have been a internal matter.
If S31 were after all a secret agency within the Federation's leadership, then the Federation gets full blame and responsibility for all therir action, even if some of those actions were of a "rogue" nature.
There is a important difference between the Founders action is attempting to exterminate the Cardassians, and section 31 threat to genocide the Founders. The sickness they gave the Founders was a threat, a way of malnipulating the Founders.
Say what you will, it worked. The Federation's victory would not have been achieved in the time frame it was, without the sickness.
Building a vast number of nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them, isn't the same as actually nuking Russian cities.
