[DISCUSSION] Penal Code compilation

The Magisterium
,
1

I think we could benefit from establishing a tiered list of punishments (i.e. tier 1 - 4 statutory / indictable offenses with different standardized max / min punishments based on what we already use; thank you Cyberium, for the tier standardization concept) to better organize and minimize our legal code.

A list of the punishments I’ve found in our legal code, which I’m going to further highlight / annotate in order to attempt to organize tiers (some just won’t fit and will need to be specified in the relevant legislation, obviously):

DELELEC:

“dealt with by the Viceroy” - unclear if summary (Viceroy doesn’t have constitutional authority to enforce summary?) or indicted:

  • electioneering / impropriety - 1st offense: warning
  • electioneering / impropriety - 2nd offense: removal of voting priv.s during election & following election
  • electioneering / impropriety - 3rd+ offense: removal of voting priv.s & candidacy eligibility for 1 year
  • vote stacking / voter fraud: INDICTABLE; no less than permanent banishment
  • Failure to Conduct Procedure (Viceroy / designee doesn’t run elections): unable to conduct elections / referenda for 1 year (indicted by Viziers?)

ENDOCAP:

  • Nation under notice for 3 days w/o willingness to comply: unendorsement campaign, ejection, or “banishment” (could be classified as summary)
  • 3x cap violations within 1 year: INDICTABLE; maximum permanent banishment
    PUBLIC OFFICIAL DISC:
  • “Failure to comply with this Act”: INDICTABLE; maximum 1 year banishment

RMBRA:

  • Spam, Harassment, Advertising: SUMMARY; suppression, ejection, &/or permanent banishment

R. SERVICES & SECURITY:

  • Viziers & Del can “deny entry or residence to any nation it deems a sig. risk” (?)
  • Violation of “[Delegate’s] additional rules of RMB conduct”: suppression of offending post
  • Violation of “on-site rules of NationStates” (we could name this “Rulebreaking”): SUMMARY; maximum permanent banishment
  • “Not respecting any provision of this Act or any other statutory obligation imposed by law”: INDICTABLE; maximum permanent ban (this one is nonsense and needs to go)

RO ACT:

  • “The Conclave may dismiss [an RO or Election Commissioner (redundant vs. other law!)] . . . through trial verdict.”

TREASON ACT:

  • High treason: INDICTABLE; “banned for life”(?)
  • Treason, 4.1.1 & 4.1.2: INDICTABLE; “banned for life”
  • Treason, 4.1.3: INDICTABLE; “banned for not more than five years”
  • Treason-espionage: INDICTABLE; “banned for not more than five years”
  • “an offense under subsection 7.1” (the actual word for this is misprision and we should call it that in the act): INDICTABLE; “banned for not more than five years”
  • Sedition: INDICTABLE; “banned for not more than five years”

VOTER REG:

  • “Any Vizier can nominate any eligible Nation for prohibition” (conflicts with / redundant vs. Reg. Serv. & Security? Also, this act says that an individual can hold cit. beffore prohibition…)
  • Maintenance of a cit. nation by a prohibited individual: SUMMARY; “permanent banishment”
  • “register multiple votes” (redundant vs. Voter Reg.!): INDICTABLE; maximum sentence of permanent banishment
  • “attempts to vote during Delegate Elections and regional referenda without valid voter registration”: INDICTABLE; maximum one year banishment (as in attempted to vote, lied on their PDF or something? Could be misconstrued & applied to someone who tried to vote but forgot to register…)
2

Additionally, I didn’t include the following acts in this summary for the following reasons:

PunDoc: probably being repealed
Awards Act: hopefully eliminating silly punishments
Conclave Act: currently under Judicial Review
All other laws: no punishments defined.

3

Our constitution establishes only three forms of offense, enforceable by the following entities:

OOC (paraphrased): Administration, by proxy if necessary (“executed by the relevant regional authorities”); the diction is strange so it looks like OOC bans can be considered equivalent to any summary or indictable offense. Regardless, this is irrelevant to this thread & to the statutes.

The relevant offenses:

Summary: immediately enforceable by the Delegate; implied to be enforceable by the Viziers against the Delegate.

Indictable: an offense defined in statute, enforceable by the Delegate following indictment by the Conclave.

Constitutional: an indictable offense against the Concordat itself, enforceable by the Delegate following indictment by the Conclave.

It behooves us to organize most* of our punishable offenses under these categories. I’ve found a number of what appear to be summary punishable offenses in our statute that aren’t explicitly called summary offenses. Bad. They need to be in line with the Concordat’s definitions and limitations.

*I’ve omitted a number of what could be perceived as “punishments” from this thread that entail the following: suspension of RO status and government positions by miscellaneous branches of the government for misconduct, suspicion of crimes, or simply at will by the branch. We should revisit a number of these later as we go through our statutory salad and decide whether they can be organized under a penal code, but many of them are mechanisms outside of “criminal offense” that need not be consolidated and are fine remaining like so in their respective laws. However, suspension of government positions are frequently coupled with committing indictable offenses and we may be able to consolidate this with several of the tiers listed subsequently.

Here’s what I think we can do here:

In one fell swoop, establish this Penal Code and amend all of the affected laws to list crimes that they NAME (too many of our laws establish violations without naming them - i.e. “High Treason” = GOOD! “Treason under 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 vs. Treason under 4.1.3” = BAD! Separate them by name. “Award Fraud” = GOOD; even if I think the punishment shouldn’t exist; “attempts to vote during Delegate Elections and regional referenda without valid voter registration” = BAD! Give it a name!) as having a specific, tiered punishment, like so - and these are all based directly on the punishments I’ve compiled from our existing statutes:

Tier 1 Summary Offense: punishable by RMB post suppression.

Tier 2 Summary Offense: punishable by ejection or permanent ejection and banishment from The East Pacific.

Tier 1 Indictable Offense: punishable by suspension of voting privileges for ongoing or upcoming Delegate elections and subsequent Delegate election cycle.**

Tier 2 Indictable Offense: punishable by suspension of voting privileges*** and eligibility for Delegate candidacy for one year.

Tier 3 Indictable Offense: punishable by banishment from The East Pacific for up to 1 year.

Tier 4 Indictable Offense: punishable by banishment from The East Pacific for up to 5 years.

Tier 5 Indictable Offense: punishable by up to permanent banishment from The East Pacific.

Tier 6 Indictable Offense: punishable by no less than permanent banishment from The East Pacific.

** The Del. Elec. Act seems to make these offenses unilaterally punishable by the Viceroy or designee but this seems to be of questionable constitutional validity. Better to define them as indictable, in my opinion.
*** Just a note: The Del. Elec. Act doesn’t specify whether this is Delegate elections &/or referenda…

4

Ive been thinking on this: is there any particular use of a 1 year or 5 year max ban? I’m not sure such bans really do much for rehabilitation.

Just a thought, ig. Idrk.

5

Conclave banned The Python for three years under the “up to five years” option. I don’t think rehabilitation is always so much the goal as a duration that feels like it matches the weight of the crime, and also removes the threat for a sufficient period of time.

6

So the discussion here is on moving all offenses out of their laws and into a penal code, correct?

7

Yes, for everything that fits into it. The laws would then simply state “High Treason is a Tier 6 Indictable Offense as defined by the Penal Code,” or have a foreword somewhere in the Definitions like “this law defers to the tiered punishment system in the Penal Code” followed by “High Treason is a Tier 6 Indictable Offense”, or something like that.

8

i guess

9

So the Penal Code would only lay out the tiers? And the individual laws refer to those tiers?

13

Does anyone else think Tier 1 and Tier 2 Indictable Offenses should be swapped, or should we have someone potentially running in an election that they’re not eligible to vote in?

14

I imagine that the intent here is that whilst they are stripped of their right to vote, they are still considered a “Registered Voter” hence being eligible for the Delegacy.

Tier 1 punishment being only a smaller length of time ie only being in effect for up to 4 months.

Tier 2 strips them of their voting rights and affects their Registered Voter status for a year, which is 3 delegate cycles.

16

I understand the intent, but I still think the Tier 1 punishment should be for Tier 2 and vice versa. Voting is a fundamental right. Running for office is not. I think the latter should be restricted before the former.