115 lines
5.9 KiB
Markdown
115 lines
5.9 KiB
Markdown
# Policing — the pre-arrest half
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*The other half of the loop. Where the rest of Justice deals with people the colony has already
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caught, **policing** is what happens before the cell door: your own colonists commit crimes on the
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propensity spectrum, the colony investigates, and — sometimes — arrests.*
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It is a big behavioural change (your colonists become potential criminals), so it has **its own
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toggle** in the mod settings, on by default. Turn it off to run the rest of Justice — classification,
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deterrence, discipline, parole, regime — without colony crime.
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---
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## The loop
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**crime → witnessed / investigated → weighed arrest (resist?) → prison → … → parole → recidivism**
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Every stage draws on the same shared systems — each colonist's propensity, the one shared criminal
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record, the climate of order — so policing is not a bolt-on: the record it writes is the record
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classification grades on and discipline reforms.
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## Crime — and why small colonies stay honest
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Every ~40 seconds, each free colonist gets a hidden roll to offend. The base chance is low (about
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6% per roll) and it is multiplied hard by nature × nurture — almost nobody with an ordinary
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disposition ever does anything. But it is *also* multiplied by **crime cover**:
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| Free colonists | Crime cover |
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|---|---|
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| ≤ 3 | 0.15 |
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| ~8 | ~0.6 |
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| ≥ 13 | 1.0 |
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In a tight 2–3 pawn colony everyone knows everyone and retribution is certain even without a jail, so
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crime is **rare**; a larger, more anonymous colony offers cover. This is a deliberate inversion of the
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naive "no enforcement → more crime": a small colony is kept honest by its own closeness, not by a
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constable.
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A crime is one of **theft**, **vandalism**, or **assault** — leaning on who the culprit is (a
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kleptomaniac steals, a bloodlusty pawn assaults, a pyromaniac vandalizes).
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## Consequences — the stakes
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A crime leaves a mark the colony can *see*:
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- **Theft** lifts a small stack of the colony's goods and the thief **pockets it**. RimWorld has no
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per-person property (stockpiles are communal), so theft is theft from the common store — but the
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culprit now physically carries what they took, a natural evidence trail a search can pick up.
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- **Vandalism** damages a nearby colony building.
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- **Assault** gives a nearby colonist a light, down-safe knock — and the culprit chooses their mark
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**wisely**: someone they resent (motive), who is weak (little retribution), and unwatched (few
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witnesses).
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- **Relationships fray.** An assault victim thinks much worse of their attacker immediately (they saw
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who did it); and when investigation *names* a culprit, the whole colony's opinion of them drops.
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- The colony is **notified** a crime happened — culprit unknown.
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## Witnesses and investigation
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A crime is not equally solvable. Colonists who were near enough to **see** it are witnesses, and each
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is a partial lead — a witnessed crime starts up to 80% of the way to solved before anyone lifts a
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finger; an unseen one is a **cold case** worked from nothing.
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Investigation then builds evidence toward a full, named solve two ways:
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- **Ambient** progress, scaled by how many colonists the colony can spare — a background trickle from
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everyone keeping an eye out, faster when the colony has people to spare.
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- **The policing work type.** Assign a colonist to *policing* and they walk to open **crime scenes**
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and work them, adding a chunk of evidence scaled by their Intellectual + Social skill. A sharp
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constable cracks cases fast; a colony that spares no one lets them go cold.
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## The weighed arrest
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A solved case does **not** mean an automatic arrest. Fellow-colonist cops will not gut the colony to
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jail someone over a petty crime — the arrest is a cost/benefit call, and it goes ahead only when both
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are true: the colony can **afford a prison**, and the crime is **serious enough** to clear a bar that
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rises with how valuable the culprit is.
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- **Severity** — the crime's kind (theft 1 · vandalism 1.5 · assault 2.5), escalated by the culprit's
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record (a rap sheet and prior escapes compound).
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- **Value** — 0..1 from the culprit's best skills. The bar sits at about 1.5 for an expendable pawn
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and climbs by three times the culprit's value — so a star colonist raises it to about 4.5.
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- **Capacity** — **below ~5 colonists, or with no prison bed, the colony arrests no one.** A prisoner
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plus a warden would cripple a small colony. Capacity ramps up as the colony grows.
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So a petty crime by your only doctor → they walk. A murder → arrested regardless. And a crime that
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paid, unanswered, erodes the climate of order a little more (crime emboldens).
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## Resisting arrest
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The disposed do not go quietly (seeded by nature × nurture):
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- **Comply** → taken in cleanly (they become a prisoner of the colony — imprisonment is direct, and it
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survives guest-management mods like Hospitality).
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- **Resist** → the violent turn **berserk**, the rest **flee**. A botched arrest becomes a crisis the
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colony must handle the hard way, and openly defying arrest emboldens the lawless.
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- **Subdued** → a resister the colony beats down is then **imprisoned** — the resist path resolves to a
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cell once the colony wins the confrontation. One who flees the map gets away.
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## Prison riots
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When the climate of order **collapses** (deterrence at the floor) in a colony holding prisoners, a
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neglected prison boils over into a **riot**: disposed prisoners turn violent together, and the unrest
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shatters order further. A well-run colony (high deterrence) never sees one — a riot is the thing a
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badly-run institution *earns*.
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## Recidivism, made visible
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The loop closes on itself: a pawn hardened in prison (negative reform) runs a higher propensity and
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reoffends. When investigation names a culprit the colony had **paroled**, it says so out loud — the
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recidivism loop turning in the open, the payoff for everything classification, discipline, and parole
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did upstream.
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---
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Part of **Institution: Policing**, in the Institution suite.
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