Crime in the Republic

Ministry of Justice

Minister Velkura Thonem

5302 [Verify this year makes sense later]

An overview of crime in the Republic, it's history, and how we can eliminate crime.

Where law and order exist, there are those that seek to undermine it for personal gain and these people create the criminal cabals that operate. Even the most petty crimes are symptoms of the disease of these criminal cabals.

Crime has existed on Anita long before we found our way into the stars, and the same organizations that operated then still largely operate today, although alien influence has spurred all sorts of new crime, particularly the Asida have been quite a pain in the crime epidemic on colony worlds, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. To properly understand the current crime issues, we need to start at the beginning.

The issues with crime were nearly non-existent before the Imperialist Era of the Republic. While we were correct that many of these savage Tutinari were only this way because of incompetent, corrupt, or complacent local leaders the truth is that not all Tutinari appreciated the order and stability that the Republic provides. These Tutinari often become criminals, attempting to harm that very order, stability, and even the Republic itself.

Of course there are other types of criminals, even more so now but still then those that seek personal gain above all else. They don't care about fairness nor equality only that they may live a more comfortable life at the expense of everyone else. Make no mistake, these criminals are just as evil as any other, for they fund the criminal markets. Their stolen funds are difficult to use at respectable establishments, so they buy things from criminals and because these criminal markets are unregulated despicable things end up in these markets.

Before the Republic began it's Imperial Era local municipality Justice Officers were able to deal with the few petty issues that would arise. Before the expansion the Justice offices never had more than a dozen cells and wait times for sentencing was non-existent. As expansion began crime increased. At first it was only in the newly acquired territories, but when that crime wasn't immediately squashed it was allowed to grow. Had the Legions of the Republic been slower and kept our armies in these territories longer, we may have stabilized the regions before it grew into this plague.

When the Imperial Era ended we had acquired more criminals than our justice system could handle, and the Ministry of Justice had been formed, but it wasn't early enough. The economic situation post Imperial Era was less than ideal. Minister Morveth (The first Minister of Justice) had hoped that the military budget would decrease, and that those funds could be at least in large part transferred to the Ministry of Justice however the Senate had another idea. See, part of the Dia Thorn Accords (Treaty that ended the Imperial Era) the Republic was to downsize it's offensive military. Wanting to keep much of its offensive military in active service, Senators decided that the demands of Minister Morveth, and obligations under the Dia Thorn Accords could be met with one action. Much of the offensive portions of the military were transferred to the Ministry of Justice.

This action resulted in mixed reactions from the civilian population, from much of the original Republic regions who were tired of constant crime threatening their neighborhoods, this was a fantastic decision. For those new territories that still had yet to see the full scope of law and order that they could have, they did not like the idea of these armies moving back through, even if it was to reduce crime. Of course my opinion is that this is the correct move, but done too late and under poor optics. The Ministry of Justice had not had time to retrain and refit these troops for police work, and thus the perception that we were sending our troops to deal with crime seemed like overkill. This caused their deployment to be limited and serious action taken against criminals was infrequent. The few deployments in large scale troops only saw more crime in those regions.

In summary; We did not deploy the army when we should have. When we did deploy the army, it was against our own citizens, and even then only an ounce of what we could have done. Had we kept the armies in place during expansion, we could have squashed criminals early. Had we given proper training to the army before deploying them to our cities, we may have prevented inflaming the crime situation. Had we deployed the untrained army at full capacity we could have quickly and surely dealt with the criminals it would have destroyed the plague at a high price.

Given my historical analysis, and ignoring future events, the last option was likely the best one. As much as I would have liked to see the first option, it would have caused many issues with local populations to have a standing army keeping the peace, and those troops were sorely needed on the front lines.

Alien contact may have been the worst thing ever in terms of crime.

When the Asida showed up we were still decades off the ability to manipulate distances in space, and we still aren't sure how exactly the Gates work. While our diplomats were trying to figure out what they're government looked like and who we needed to talk to the corporations on Asida signed all sorts of deals. The Asida simply skipped our check points, ignored our official hail request once they learned the State transmissions wouldn't buy anything. I'm not confident a single Asida followed all the proper channels for commerce, much less movement laws in space. They simply ignored many of our laws, or treated them as optional formalities. They turned so many of our respectable space industry businesses into criminals, and it's easy to see why the company that didn't break the law aren't around today, the laws have only changed to make trade with Asida easier. Although this is a hot button modern topic and we're still in the early history, so I'll try get back on track.

It wasn't long before the space race was on proper. The Asida were well ahead of us in tech, but were eager to sell it all to us and for once the government wasn't asked to subside this spending, only loosen regulations on space industry. Before long shipyards that previously primarily built luxury space yachts that were really only impressive that they existed, to truly nice ships fitted with warp drives. Of course anyone who wanted to buy one still have to receive approval and any bubble created had to be meticulously planned, the most common law broken by the Asida.

Before long the Republic was commissioning colony ships that would have an assist jump ring that would take them to new habitable worlds. It was unlawful for private companies to establish their own colonies an any planet other than Biona. Biona is now, predictably, a hive of scum and villainy. The Ministry of Justice is not welcome on the planet, thankfully we have full legal rights to be there and will continue to hunt the criminals anywhere they go.

In the Proper Republic colonies, crime is considerably lower but still far outside acceptable levels. To give you some idea how bad the situation on Biona is, we spend only a few million more Astroni policing every Republic colony world as we do Biona alone. This is in part of Biona's significantly larger population, but even larger factors are that aliens have far too many freedoms in that system. It is no surprise that when the law preventing aliens from establishing permanent residency on the planet was removed that crime rates skyrocketed shortly after. The cities of Biona are not welcoming to proper Republic Citizens.

When approaching modern day, Biona deserves it's own spotlight on how it's crime developed, operates, grows, and it's affects on the rest of the Republic. There are three major gangs that operate on the planet. These gangs are so powerful they operate openly, intermingled with civilian populations. One would think that with the firepower and diplomacy that the Ministry of Justice has at it's disposal we'd be able to do something about criminal organizations operating out of buildings with their iconography on display, advertising where they are. If this was happening on any other planet these buildings would be swiftly raided, but the corporate governments that operate on Biona have tied us up legally. We cannot conduct raids unless we have proof of crime happening at the location, and of course these gangs are smart enough not to conduct any illegal business at these locations and the local politicians protect them. Despite them flaunting their membership in an organization that is known to conduct illegal activities as their primary revenue driver, apparently setting up a recruiting office is perfectly fine. I digress.

The luxuries criminals are afforded on Biona and Asida worlds allows them to plan elaborate ways with the budget of nation states to conduct illegal operations in the Republic. Our Imperial Era tools are decrepit and unfit to face a modern adversary and funding is not keeping up. I have repeatedly stated that if the Ministry of Justice does not receive the funding that the military does, we will not be able to continue providing excellent Justice even to the now mostly pacified Arita.