What was the Female SS's Sentence?
- Thread starter Photon
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She agreed to stand trial for war crimes ... Most likely due to the genocide against Cardassia.
Don't know what her actual sentence was. Her prison time would depend on the average Founder lifespan, I assume.
Don't know what her actual sentence was. Her prison time would depend on the average Founder lifespan, I assume.
Rehabilitation, I would assume, or at least I'd like to. I find that the backing off of the psychiatric approach to criminality from TOS to adopt a basically contemporary penal philosophy was one of the bigger failures of modern Trek. Then again, in the 1980s and 1990s, "rehabilitation" was no longer a watchword and had not been for decades. Still, an unfortunate loss for the Roddenberry utopia, one I at least prefer to ignore.
Incidentally, did anyone else think "Ilsa, She-Wolf" when they saw this thread title?
Incidentally, did anyone else think "Ilsa, She-Wolf" when they saw this thread title?
I was definitively thinking about Nazi females when I read the title! 
It probably would not be possible to rehab a shapeshifter. She is a special case. Due to the extreme caution needed to handle her (being a founder, she could escape in a second if not controlled at all times) there wouldn't be time or resources to waste trying to reform her.
I think her punishment would be to live with solids in a prison camp.
Not that they could stop her escaping or killing everybody in it.
Without the solidification punishment Odo got you would think it was rather pointless unless they kept her in a cage. That would just be cruel even if she is a big war crim.
Not that they could stop her escaping or killing everybody in it.
Without the solidification punishment Odo got you would think it was rather pointless unless they kept her in a cage. That would just be cruel even if she is a big war crim.
A Changeling can be anything, even something to penetrate a forcefield.
Might as well just let her return to the Great Link, and then prepare for Dominion War II lol. it's a possibility, since the Bajor Treaty is based on wishful thinking by the Federation. Besides, the Klingons don't believe in ending war via treaties, and the Romulans live for expansion. so, yep, Dominion War II soon lol
Might as well just let her return to the Great Link, and then prepare for Dominion War II lol. it's a possibility, since the Bajor Treaty is based on wishful thinking by the Federation. Besides, the Klingons don't believe in ending war via treaties, and the Romulans live for expansion. so, yep, Dominion War II soon lol
This. She got life, with parole hearings every 50 years.
Yet did modern Trek go contemporary? They have "sentences" of six months for everything, be it smuggling band-aids or attempting genocide. Those don't sound at all like punitive jail sentences - they appear to be in the best spirits of "Dagger of the Mind" or "Whom Gods Destroy" where criminals get taken in to an institution to facilitate their treatment, not to punish them with loss of freedom.
There's a single reference to a punitive fine existing in the UFP - and that's a fine on Quark, a non-citizen. Apart from that, there are no traditional punishments in evidence. E.g. Odo's holding cells aren't used particularly punitively, but basically protectively; they had those in TOS already.
As for punishing the shapeshifter, I'd guess she got to dictate her own sentence. I mean, if she didn't like what she got, she could have terminated the UFP. There might have been a bit of a delay, of course, if the termination fleet didn't get permission to use the wormhole, but the Dominion military still remained a superior force, undefeated in battle.
I guess the only alternative to going soft on the shapeshifter would have been carrying her away to some secret location during the brief time before the Feds had delivered the cure to the Link (and thus could play tough), then starting the punishment in total secrecy while pretending that she was being pampered. But that'd be very risky, not to mention giving a bad rep to the UFP even in the eyes of the Alpha Quadrant or the UFP citizenry.
Timo Saloniemi
There is most likely no need to reform the female changeling, since this was already accomplished by Odo when he links with her in WYTB.
Until she links with Odo she is bent on massacring the Cardassians because she believes she must make an example of them to all solids, who she deems to be implicitly untrustworthy. After linking with Odo, this has changed.
The writers were smart enough not to try to spell out the nature of her realization, but it's unlikely that she merely made a deal with Odo along the lines of: "You cure the Founders, I call off the Jem'Hadar." There is, for example, no reason for her to believe the solids will allow Odo to cure the founders after she has surrendered. Certainly Odo intends to, but he could easily be prevented from doing so. Indeed, the Cardassians and Romulans attempted pre-emptive genocide of the Founders, and a covert arm of the Federation was responsible for the virus.
Beyond that, it's firmly established that the link is not about exchanging information, it's a merging of thought and feeling.
After linking with Odo, she now knows what Odo has known since Chimera: the female changeling has been wrong all along, a solid can love and accept a changeling for what he truly he is. In other words, the link cures her of the disease, yes, but also brings her to recognize the gravity of her error of judgement regarding the solids, i.e. she is reformed, or has at least made a major step in that direction.
The fact that she agrees to stand trail suggests that she agrees to accept whatever sentence the Federation deems appropriate. And doubtless the Federation and its allies would be extremely wary of her for the foreseeable future, not take her "reform" for granted or assume her more reconciliatory attitude would be permanent.
Solids don't understand the link (witness Garak and even Kira's suspicion of Odo's decision to link with the FC in WYTB). So, a long prison sentence does seem like the logical outcome of the FC's trial, especially because I can't see the FC working very hard to convince the solids to go easy on her.
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might have kicked her out an airlock. since founders need no oxygen or anything else to breathe, and no energy supply of any sort, and are also immune against the cold of space, she's pobably floating somewhere in the alpha quadrant. unless she shapeshifted into a warp capable vessel and returned to the great link.
Didn't Tom Paris spend like two years in a prison in New Zealand? I mean, it was a nicer prison than contemporary ones, but it was never spoken of (that I recall) as a mental health facility, like Tantalus* and Elba were.
*Although who names their healing center Tantalus? Talk about your mixed messages.
Who got six months for attempted genocide? I want to see that.
Incidentally, I wonder how the female changeling's case was adjudicated. As much as the Nuremburg tribunals are accused of being victors' justice, at least there was an international law framework there that could be argued to consider aggressive war and wholesale genocide illegal. And subsequent German trials used the German law of the day to adjudicate guilt. Somehow it doesn't seem to me that the Trek universe even has customary international law, and even if it does, it doesn't prohibit conquest, wars of aggression, enslavement, or genocide, given how common they are (Enabrin Tane: criminal against humanity?). For example, no one ever sought to bring Cardie criminals before any tribunal other than a Bajoran one, who used Bajoran law, not interstellar law.
In the absence of international law, by what law would the Founder even be tried? Cardassian law? It was a voluntary member of the Dominion. Dominion law? Does the Dominion even have law, outside of the decisions of the Founders?
Of course, if the Federation did still adhere to a psychiatric approach to penal responsibility, guilt need not matter. As long as they had personal jurisdiction over the female Founder (granted, presumably, by the treaty of surrender, or by a Federation act placing any territory occupied by Starfleet's force of arms under the jurisdiction of Federation courts), she could be committed to rehabilitation outside of any adjudication of guilt under rule of law. Which raises the question whether the Federation is a rule of law society as we know it.
Edit: Oh, finally, charges of victors' justice in criminally sanctioning Dominion leaders are actually much sharper than any made in regard to the trial of Germans and Japanese by the Allies. I mean, yeah, we (USA, UK, USSR) killed like ten million Germans and Japanese, oftentimes in a manner that can be argued to amount to systematic genocide, but we didn't start firebombing cities and ethnically cleansing Silesia before formal hostilities were declared. Where's the trial of the Feds who decided it would be a good idea to use biological warfare against a people they weren't actually at war with? What about the Romulans involved in an unprovoked orbital bombardment that fortunately happened to be against the wrong planet?
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We never got his sentence length, I'm afraid. Nor the nature of his imprisonment. We don't even know what Janeway really promised him - a shortened sentence, a clearing of criminal/mental record, a restoration of some sort of status or another? She said she'd hire him for the job of tracking down Chakotay, then "cut him loose", which may mean just about anything.
Garak did, for her attempted use of the guns of the Defiant in "Broken Link". And yes, I'd definitely also want to see the counseling sessions where the UFP experts try to fix the tailor's headspace...Who got six months for attempted genocide? I want to see that.
Sometimes I wonder if even the UFP has customary internal law. I mean, if criminality is categorically defined as an illness, why have trials? It's fairly irrelevant what the patient has done or not done, and the treatment is unlikely to do him or her any harm even if applied without cause. And the "with/without cause" question is something only medical experts can answer - people enforcing or interpreting law would be badly out of their depth there.
But reading on, I see you have wondered about that as well...
Timo Saloniemi
Surely depriving an innocent (or "healthy?") person of his freedom for 6 months is punishment in and of itself, even if the corrective treatment is not harmful. You would at least need to prove that the illness exists before forcing an individual to undergo treatment.
I think you would still need courts in some form, to determine if the "symptom" had manifested itself.
It's not "attempted genocide". It's genocide. If you're referring to the fact that she didn't manage to kill all Cardassians, well, nobody in the recent history has managed to kill all members of a particular ethnic/national/religious group, but that doesn't mean they aren't guilty of the crime of genocide.Who got six months for attempted genocide? I want to see that.
Um, what would the point of a law system if the punishment were to release a convicted criminal, so they could do whatever they like all over again? It's the point of the penal law to protect the society and stop the criminal from committing crimes again?
Not every criminal needs to go to a "mental health facility". Is that a euphemism for brain washing factory?
As for the female Founder... it wouldn't make any sense to punish her. "Solids" punishing the "Founder", that would only confirm every prejudice the shape shifters have against them.
As for the female Founder... it wouldn't make any sense to punish her. "Solids" punishing the "Founder", that would only confirm every prejudice the shape shifters have against them.
So what are you saying - the Founders need to be above the law and have a privileged position in relation to everyone else, basically being allowed to do whatever they please, even commit genocide and mass murder, for fear that the solids do not annoy the Founders in any way?
Maximum security prison? But this is not canon is it?
How would a maximum security prison contain her? Stop her from shapeshifting? but I thought the Federation didn't believe in cruel penal methods? It's like telling a Klingon to be non-violent, or a Vulcan not to be logical. it's who she is.
I think the only option is either to keep her in a liquid state for a number of years (kind of like how the baby Changeling Odo found was), or let her go back to the Great Link and be with her people.
How would a maximum security prison contain her? Stop her from shapeshifting? but I thought the Federation didn't believe in cruel penal methods? It's like telling a Klingon to be non-violent, or a Vulcan not to be logical. it's who she is.
I think the only option is either to keep her in a liquid state for a number of years (kind of like how the baby Changeling Odo found was), or let her go back to the Great Link and be with her people.
So what are you saying - the Founders need to be above the law and have a privileged position in relation to everyone else, basically being allowed to do whatever they please, even commit genocide and mass murder, for fear that the solids do not annoy the Founders in any way?
LOL, why the extreme?
24th century jurisdiction is about making you understand the crimes you committed. You could have thrown Hitler in a cell or executed him (like what happened to many Nazi officials during the Nuremberg Trials). But would that have made him understand what he did? Understand that what he did was wrong?
In our time, many criminals who go to prison remain criminal, most of them have even less restraints to commit even worse crimes. They leave prison with the goal not to get caught again, but not with the goal not to commit any crimes again. That's the major flaw in our system.
Odo did the right thing. He returned to the Great Link to teach the Founders about the "Solids", in order to change their philosophy of domination of "lesser" species. You can't teach that to a Founder by putting him in a prison.
The point is you can't punish a racist or a religious zealot. You can get rid of them by throwing them in a cell, closing the door and throwing the key away. But that doesn't solve the main problem.
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