The Criminal Justice Process on Bay Area RP?

Generally speaking, the criminal justice process involves the following stages: the investigation, the search warrant, the interrogation, the arrest, the complaint, information or indictment, arraignment, bail, plea negotiations, the trial, the verdict, and appeal. How will (or should) it work on Bay Area RP, though?

I don't think it will be that indepth for regular crimes, but I can see this type of process for gangsters, and their organizations. 

Gangbangers who are in factions should be taken seriously, not so much those who are trolls or civilians not in any factions; they'll be sent to prison and have to prove their innocence, just like LS:RP. I think that the trials should be handled on the forums (unless there's a division within the Department of Justice with at least 30 judges, and can have at least 5-10 judges online everyday who can hold trials). Gangbangers who arrested for a crime (not stuff that was clearly caught on camera though, like mowing down 3 crips with an AK47) like shooting, robbery, or extortions should be sent to the Police Precint and offered some sort of bail (unless the judge declares no bail) after seeing a judge; then that individual is to spend time at the precint (unless a county jail is made) until their trial. There should be a division in the Police Deparment or Department of Corrections that handles these individuals.

Regardless of what they choose to do with this within the realm of things that are actually feasible in a videogame.

You can be rest assured that a huge chunk of players will play the "MUH REALISM" card when they get caught IC.

Whatever LS-RP was doing seemed fine, I don't think it's possible to improve on that.

An innocent until proven guilty system with speedy in-game/forum trials for most arrests is a pipe dream.

I think it’s not needed because the majority of legitimate arrests in-game will most likely be exactly cops witnessing and cameras capturing someone shooting, evading, having drugs/guns.

Anything else that’s 50-50 or needs the opinion of a judge or jury will be rare. On top of that you’ll need an advanced forensics system for evidence gathering and it’s only speculation if one will exist.

I think that after an arrest anyone should be able to bring a case directly before a court with a lawyer without repercussion - there should be no "you must try IA first!" rule because they purposefully delay court proceedings by not providing input within an allotted period of time. 

1 hour ago, Mopey said:

Whatever LS-RP was doing seemed fine, I don't think it's possible to improve on that.

Meme?

2 hours ago, Mopey said:

Whatever LS-RP was doing seemed fine, I don't think it's possible to improve on that.

I disagree whole-heartedly as someone who has deeply involved in the process. It was good on paper, but in practice the people who came to manage it weren't the best and often times there was huge delays in the court process. Cases could last 6 months purely due to inactivity on one or both party's parts.

34 minutes ago, Bospy said:

 

I disagree whole-heartedly as someone who has deeply involved in the process. It was good on paper, but in practice the people who came to manage it weren't the best and often times there was huge delays in the court process. Cases could last 6 months purely due to inactivity on one or both party's parts.

I was mainly thinking about how the process looks from capture to incarceration IC, as opposed to what happens when/if a player decides to fight it out in the courts.

Even considering the process as a whole though, what are the alternatives?

1 hour ago, Mopey said:

Even considering the process as a whole though, what are the alternatives?

There needs to be an active team of judges that aren't thin skinned and willing to settle without outside intervention. People should not need to wait 20 days for a judge to say "ok since PD hasn't responded it's in X's favor!". Give them 72 hours rather than such a huge amount of time. Judges and the Department of Justice should be above officers - it's they who decide what happens, not the police.

1 hour ago, Bospy said:

 

There needs to be an active team of judges that aren't thin skinned and willing to settle without outside intervention. People should not need to wait 20 days for a judge to say "ok since PD hasn't responded it's in X's favor!". Give them 72 hours rather than such a huge amount of time. Judges and the Department of Justice should be above officers - it's they who decide what happens, not the police.

I can't agree anymore.

I think that we should avoid over complicating it as it's a game after all. So if should be kept as a simple system as it comes to the advantage of all involved parties. No extensive forum work and waiting. However though we need something to prevent false arrests as much as possible. Those can really ruin the game for someone and it's not necessarily a malicious intent, mistakes happen, although given that an officer goes through academy, law mistakes shouldn't be likely, and even if the officer gets it wrong in real life, the court will fix that mistake before the person is even jailed.

So a fast and simple appeal system would be fine. Ultimately it comes down to the officer to be understanding to an OOC level, to understand that jailing someone mistakenly kills the fun and that they aren't always in the right, they must realize that they may lack knowledge, which is fine. 

If prison sentences didn't last hours and instead would be in weeks/life sentence/death penalty (for the most horrible crimes) then having a proper criminal justice process with a fair trial would work fine and there would be a point having them. However, there would have to be an active Department of Justice for this to work properly. I'm not sure how all of this works exactly in the United States but I'm sure it could be simplified since this is a game while introducing more realistic elements than most servers who just consider you guilty until proven innocent and send you to prison without any due process of law.

I think the due process of law being implemented into the server could be a good thing. It will bring a lot more roleplay opportunities on both sides. There's a lot of mafia factions on the server. And saying that this isn't necessary just because it's a game is mind boggling. What if a low level associate of faction a (illegal) get indicted by faction b, which is obviously the legal law enforcement agency on the server, and he/she wants to fight it out in court? How would that happen if their isn't a court system implemented at all? And also, I'm a firm believer of something being implemented even if it isn't used all the time. That doesn't mean it's completely useless. I think this should be considered just like all the other suggestions that have been made and debated upon. This would be a huge stepping stone towards other kinds of roleplay from a political stand-point and even from an illegal/legal faction(s) stand-point. Players who are roleplaying criminals will be more careful when dealing due to the fear of being indicted and going to trail, etc. Normal jail times could be raised because a player lost trial, causing faction a (the illegal faction) to assign a interim leader until the real leader is released. With this implemented into the server, the possibilities for roleplay are endless legally. There's so many things that could happen outside of just the normal: handcuff, read Maranda rights, jailed, serve time, back out on the streets, and finally rinse and repeat. That becomes repetitive after a while and seeing an actual trial system implemented would give a breath of fresh air to other veteran roleplayers like myself.

Sure it would be good to have a justice system in place for serious convictions and appeals on the forums or even in game. A simple system that works with the game, one thing I really dislike is the tedious work that I've seen in some places, like forum court cases with literally 10 000 words. I mean, do we really need that much detail? Why not just use some simple formats rather than the complex ones that we see in real life? I just don't see tedious forum work as immersing, but that might be just me.