Updating laws and regulations.

[MarsRel]

What's your Minecraft Username?: MarsRel
What's the title of your suggestion?: Updating laws and regulations.

What's your suggestion?:
it’s not specifically the laws that need to be changed, but how they’re executed and enforced. In a court of law, you are innocent until proven guilty in Japan and that is the case for many countries court of law and I believe that should be the case for the courts in Karakura.
I cannot say I’m very knowledgeable about how the law is ran in karakura but I can say that from experience that I feel it should be ran differently from how it has been. There have been multiple cases where my character has been arrested without reason and I have been forced to bail them out. I understand it’s a way to fund kpd but it’s not exactly realistic nor is it fair for many reasons. The kpd asks if you are guilty or innocent and no matter what you answer, you remain in jail whether you are truly guilty or not. But in real life, you are only held in jail until a court date to prove your innocence or other.
For cases like public presentation of assault, that is understandable because it is a public display of violence and you can be convicted without much reason, especially in the cases where Kpd, civilians or other record or witness the act and if there was injury inflicted on one another. But I feel that for most cases that it should go to a judge excluding certain situations or cases.
Without sufficient evidence, one should not be convicted nor should they be forced to wait for the character to get out, or to pay bail which is often crazy expensive for most.

How will this benefit the server and community?:
I believe having the government/law faction being more involved in criminal cases would benefit the balance between factions as well as the players themselves because we all know that you need to have evidence to even be convicted. I do understand that a lot of people have different time zones and such but as of recently I’ve noticed way more activity from KPD and government. Maybe it’s just me, but this is my view and I want others opinions, knowledgeable on this topic or not.

 

[ᶻ Wrath ♡ .ᐟ]

well you see there's a whole lot of roleplay going on here go get involved

 

[Miamorchito]

I can't really speak for KPD since I'm not a part of their faction, but I can tell you from experience that the Government Faction has been very aware of both the principle of innocence until proven guilty, and the validity and burden of evidence. We even got a whole IC conflict due to this, which concluded in the last Chief Judge being sued for Government Misconduct. Rest assured that, if you plea not-guilty, a Judge will review the case. Just keep in mind that Judges have around +100 cases to deal with right now, and most of them are trying to manage with IRL school/college/work, thus it's extremely hard, at least for us, to keep up with the constant amount of cases that keeps pouring in the system, yet we are trying. In terms of "modifying the Law" (which I know you stated that you didn't wanted to modify, but I just want to clarify this); any matter that is related with changing the Law or Regulation, or the Constitution, needs to be dealt with ICly.

On the bailing matter; if we want to speak merely on legal terms, I completely agree with OP. A bail is a collateral, meaning that it's a promise for your character to be present when they are called to court to find if they are Guilty or Not Guilty. It is not, and it should have never been, a "Get out of Jail Card", especially if you plead Guilty. This has already been brought up. If you pay to get out of jail, that was never called bail; the name is Bribery, and it could be considered Government Corruption, depending on the circumstances.

 

[MarsRel]

I can't really speak for KPD since I'm not a part of their faction, but I can tell you from experience that the Government Faction has been very aware of both the principle of innocence until proven guilty, and the validity and burden of evidence. We even got a whole IC conflict due to this, which concluded in the last Chief Judge being sued for Government Misconduct. Rest assured that, if you plea not-guilty, a Judge will review the case. Just keep in mind that Judges have around +100 cases to deal with right now, and most of them are trying to manage with IRL school/college/work, thus it's extremely hard, at least for us, to keep up with the constant amount of cases that keeps pouring in the system, yet we are trying. In terms of "modifying the Law" (which I know you stated that you didn't wanted to modify, but I just want to clarify this); any matter that is related with changing the Law or Regulation, or the Constitution, needs to be dealt with ICly.

On the bailing matter; if we want to speak merely on legal terms, I completely agree with OP. A bail is a collateral, meaning that it's a promise for your character to be present when they are called to court to find if they are Guilty or Not Guilty. It is not, and it should have never been, a "Get out of Jail Card", especially if you plead Guilty. This has already been brought up. If you pay to get out of jail, that was never called bail; the name is Bribery, and it could be considered Government Corruption, depending on the circumstances.

To add onto the judges. There should be multiple levels of court. In Japan, there are five tiers of court and there should be multiple judges that handle those different tiers (i understand it’s a Minecraft server so the amount should be lessened) But since most criminals are under the age of 20 it would be handled by the minor court or family court depending on the offense. I’m not arguing that the judges should ignore their irl lives or anything like that. I’m simply saying that there should be divisional courts that handle different cases so they dont have to look through 100+ cases of different offenses, reasonings, or anything that may put stress on the judges because there are so few that are handling every issued case that could be vastly different between eachother.

 

[Miamorchito]

To add onto the judges. There should be multiple levels of court. In Japan, there are five tiers of court and there should be multiple judges that handle those different tiers (i understand it’s a Minecraft server so the amount should be lessened) But since most criminals are under the age of 20 it would be handled by the minor court or family court depending on the offense. I’m not arguing that the judges should ignore their irl lives or anything like that. I’m simply saying that there should be divisional courts that handle different cases so they dont have to look through 100+ cases of different offenses, reasonings, or anything that may put stress on the judges because there are so few that are handling every issued case that could be vastly different between eachother.

I completely agree with what you say, and I know that you aren't saying that Judges should ignore IRL lives either, I just said it to explain why it was hard to keep up with the pace. As for the levels of court; they were introduced in the new Constitution; The Civil, Criminal, and Administrative courts, usually working as the first instance and to determine whether someone is Guilty/Liable or not, and then you have the Court of Izu as the Appeals Court, which is run by the Chief Judge. We cannot make Criminal matters into Civil matters, such as mixing a Criminal charge into a Family Court, as they operate under different rules, procedures, and principles. If a person is being prosecuted for a crime, that is going to be categorized under the Criminal Court as it's their jurisdiction.

I am not opposed into expanding the Criminal Court and having a Youth Court when the person who is facing criminal charges is under 18, however that is a matter that needs to be directed to KPD, not the Judges, as they oversee the Penal Laws and have a say on the sentences. Just keep in mind that this may add a level of complexity in SRP, which some people may not like.

 

[MarsRel]

I completely agree with what you say, and I know that you aren't saying that Judges should ignore IRL lives either, I just said it to explain why it was hard to keep up with the pace. As for the levels of court; they were introduced in the new Constitution; The Civil, Criminal, and Administrative courts, usually working as the first instance and to determine whether someone is Guilty/Liable or not, and then you have the Court of Izu as the Appeals Court, which is run by the Chief Judge. We cannot make Criminal matters into Civil matters, such as mixing a Criminal charge into a Family Court, as they operate under different rules, procedures, and principles. If a person is being prosecuted for a crime, that is going to be categorized under the Criminal Court as it's their jurisdiction.

I am not opposed into expanding the Criminal Court and having a Youth Court when the person who is facing criminal charges is under 18, however that is a matter that needs to be directed to KPD, not the Judges, as they oversee the Penal Laws and have a say on the sentences. Just keep in mind that this may add a level of complexity in SRP, which some people may not like.

I began to read the new constitution which I was not aware of until your earlier comment made me look(thank you for that lol). I see that there are many levels of court now but I feel that there aren’t enough judges to look over those courts and their cases.

Adding onto your point, I feel a youth court would be beneficial but I fear it would be overloaded with cases because of how many 18 and lower ages there are getting into trouble, and other such topics, so a certain number of judges should be appointed to certain tiers of court. I feel that it would add some complexity but not to the point where it is overwhelming as it is realistic. My reasoning for this post is to promote efficiency and understanding of the courts and laws of Karakura and to allow everyone a chance to prove innocence when facing the law. In my experience, I have never had a court date despite my character’s innocence for what they were arrested for and had paid bail to get my character out of jail. I do believe it mostly involves KPD and their execution of law and order but in most courts when a decision is made for a certain severity of a action of a person, it becomes the same for that severity for every person that comes afterwards and should not change unless the degree is lower or higher than the severity. I noticed in one of the official documents that it does not list fines or possible penalties on actions and only how many months they would be jailed, I feel that it allows KPD to shift how much bail one could pay based off purely a description of action/offense.

 

[Bunlow_]

I began to read the new constitution which I was not aware of until your earlier comment made me look(thank you for that lol). I see that there are many levels of court now but I feel that there aren’t enough judges to look over those courts and their cases.

Adding onto your point, I feel a youth court would be beneficial but I fear it would be overloaded with cases because of how many 18 and lower ages there are getting into trouble, and other such topics, so a certain number of judges should be appointed to certain tiers of court. I feel that it would add some complexity but not to the point where it is overwhelming as it is realistic. My reasoning for this post is to promote efficiency and understanding of the courts and laws of Karakura and to allow everyone a chance to prove innocence when facing the law. In my experience, I have never had a court date despite my character’s innocence for what they were arrested for and had paid bail to get my character out of jail. I do believe it mostly involves KPD and their execution of law and order but in most courts when a decision is made for a certain severity of a action of a person, it becomes the same for that severity for every person that comes afterwards and should not change unless the degree is lower or higher than the severity. I noticed in one of the official documents that it does not list fines or possible penalties on actions and only how many months they would be jailed, I feel that it allows KPD to shift how much bail one could pay based off purely a description of action/offense.

Adding onto the last sentence in that point, the number of months that are given to a sentence directly correspond to the amount of bail paid. Every month equates to 50,000 yen of bail, which stacks for every additional month.

For the rest of your point, I think the current procedures of KPD are mainly done for simplicity. Releasing an individual until their court date, in which they are proven innocent or guilty, could allow for the offender to escape, and get away - which would make it a lot harder for KPD to arrest them again. That would basically make it so no arrests are made, because you can always just run away from your court case.

I think there should be something done to allow for individuals to not have to wait forever for their case or pay a potentially very high bail, to eventually win the case and then not get that money refunded. I just think that releasing people like this is not the way to do it and could lead to issues.

I think a best-case scenario would be for the KPD and Government leads to meet up and talk about it, but even then, I believe changing anything might just cause more issues.

As for having different levels to court, I don't know if having Youth Court would do much. From what I've seen, the large majority of criminals would fall under the youth category. So having a separate Youth court wouldn't have that large of an impact on the workload for judges, in my opinion. Going back to what Miamorchito said, I do think that a change like this could cause more issues and some people would dislike the intensive realism that this could add.

 

[SKShadowFlux]

That's a though one. I think, mostly, the current system is okay as it is, and what we really need id a few quality of life changes that allow judges to handle their cases faster and easier.

SRP is already doing a lot of changes for simplicity - like bailing someone does not end up with the person being in prison if found guilty, which would be insane if it had to be enforced and make crime even more dead. I'd argue even that from an OOC perspective we should be even more lenient, just so we can encourage crime. That way, EMS and KPD will always have people to treat or arrest (they deserve quota guys!). That's besides the point.

Maybe adding a volunteer role for town hall would be nice - which would be people helping out judges in deciding what cases should proceed to court, review evidence, etc.

My point is, we should not discourage aspects of SRP as a whole, and find ways to improve what we already have.