If you commit a crime in space and no one sees it…..

[SpaceBadger]

As for what someone up above mentioned, "What if it's on a cruise ship?" I agree w the poster who said that the laws of the ship's port of registration apply _unless_ there is some particular Imperial law that overrides it.

As for who has responsibility to enforce that law on the cruise ship (or on a regular Free Trader, Fat Trader, etc carrying passengers), I think it is the Captain's duty to do his best to investigate, and if he has a suspect to hold that person confined and turn the suspect over to authorities at the next port. (When I say the Captain, of course he can delegate and have assistance of his crew.)

 

[Shonner]

If you think that all crimes are solved quickly, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Timerover51]

I fire up my veridicator (see one of a number of H. Beam Piper stories) and start asking questions.

 

[Greylond]

If you think that all crimes are solved quickly, you're doing it wrong.

True, but some Law Enforcement groups sometimes come to an erroneous conclusion fairly quickly and that leads to an adventure scenario!

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Some of them may not care, some may take action.

And, there is the key. In cases where it's a prominent citizen or a particularly grotesque crime, or something else attention-getting, that warrant will go out on all the fast-courier networks and Imperial legates all over will start looking for the perp (or even someone who could be a perp). When poor Clementine gets kidnapped and her Pa killed by claim jumpers in the outer belt, ain't nobody gonna care. Well, nobody but the PCs, maybe, or a bounty hunter that needs the measly reward offered....

 

[Whipsnade]

If you think that all crimes are solved quickly, you're doing it wrong.

Nicely put and, as Fritz correctly points out, a source for all sorts of adventures.

I fire up my veridicator (see one of a number of H. Beam Piper stories) and start asking questions.

Typically simplistic, but not surprising.

Piper's veridicator only indicates what the test subject thinks to be true and not the truth itself. There's a great difference between the two for anyone who actually cares to think about it.

Piper himself addressed the issue in one of the Fuzzy novels. A character relays an anecdote about an incident on Paris-on-Baldur. A psychiatric patient who was convinced they were Napoleon was "veridicated" and the device indicated that the patient was telling the truth.

"Veridicating" the famous blind men who examined the elephant will produce truthful statements that beast is a wall, a spear, a pillar, a rope, a fan, and so on. A thoughtful person is still needed to fit those pieces together into the correct answer and achieving the correct answer makes for a memorable campaign.

 

[CosmicGamer]

EDIT: This is simply my view so I should probably start this off by saying it is IMTU.

Whenever people start talking about bounty hunters I feel the need to point out that traveling round trip to follow and track down someone and then return with them is not cheap. Also take into consideration that only sometimes is the bounty hunter successful so the successful bounties need to pay for all the expenses of "getting their man" and cover the cost of some failed attempts too.

To me, it's more likely bounty hunters don't go jumping around and just study all the "wanted posters" and hang out at their local star port looking for any matches.

Some star ports will have facial recognition and other means for checking anybody coming and going against the latest database of wanted people.

Some societies may feel that if the criminal has fled it is no longer their problem. Make sure they don't come back. Report them to the Imperium so that they can be "flagged". But it's not worth the cost to imprison them let alone extradite them or pay rewards/bounties.

Sometimes a criminals crime is not sufficient to be extradited back to the system where the crime was committed or be prosecuted by the Imperium. Some local crimes are completely ignored by the Imperium - like parking tickets, littering, or wearing red on a religious holiday. Certain crimes will get you "flagged" as a suspected criminal. "Suspected of assault and hovercraft theft on Efate." "Suspected of rape on Pixie." Being flagged is serious enough that major liners wont give these suspected criminals passage (#1). A criminal might find that they have become persona non gratis and many systems won't "stamp their passport" and let them pass through customs (#2). They may find themselves stuck in the star port like Tom Hanks in "The Terminal".

Maybe the criminal got to whatever new system before word of their deeds catches up to them. Perhaps they'd live pretty good in a low tech system or low law system, if that's the type of place they want to spend the rest of their life. In other systems word would eventually get out and while they might not extradite you or imprison you for crimes allegedly committed elsewhere it could have a variety of consequences like not being able to get credit, own real estate, get a job, and so on. "I'm sorry sir, but until you get this outstanding charge dropped..."

(#1) Insert adventure when a small tramp freighter is having trouble filling the staterooms and is short on credits.
(#2) Insert adventure when a tramp freighter is hired to smuggle someone down to the planet without going through customs.

 

[Greylond]

Good points. I'll be stealing some of those ideas for MTU...

 

[rancke]

A lot of those problems with bounties came up during the playtest of GT: Bounty Hunters. We did manage to get some of them addressed.


Hans

 

[Shonner]

A lot of those problems with bounties came up during the playtest of GT: Bounty Hunters. We did manage to get some of them addressed.


Hans

Do I have that book? Looking...

 

[Icosahedron]

Of course, if the corpse is disposed in space, it will be quite difficult to find...

No it won't. Vacuum insulation and decomposition will make the body radiate like a beacon in the infra-red for months and it'll be visible even to today's sensors all the way to Alpha Centauri...

 

[Murphy]

It'll radiate most of the heat away in a few days at most. And decomposition? Sure there are a lot of microorganisms living in a healthy human's body, but I don't think those would suffice to decompose it.

I suppose if you know what orbital coordinates the ship had, you can track the corpse that was jettisoned along the way. Otherwise nope, space is too big.

 

[aramis]

It'll radiate most of the heat away in a few days at most. And decomposition? Sure there are a lot of microorganisms living in a healthy human's body, but I don't think those would suffice to decompose it.

I suppose if you know what orbital coordinates the ship had, you can track the corpse that was jettisoned along the way. Otherwise nope, space is too big.

Anaerobic decomposition lasts anywhere from a week to a month or more, and is exothermic. You'll have at least 3-4 days of being well above background unless the body is cooled before ejection to the preservation point (in which case, it will cool steadily to insolation based equilibrium.

Bodies in relatively warm snow (-2 to +2 C air temps) continue to melt snow for a up to a couple days as anaerobic putrefaction generates some heat and keeps the body from dropping below 0°C. And that's got a lot of loss by conduction. (I've only seen it in animals, but it smells bad and it's gory. Nothing like a steaming pile of goo in the woods.)

Subtract the conduction, and a warm body ejected will be warm for days to weeks, depending upon solar distance.

Heck, nominal body cooling in room temp atmosphere is only 0.78°C/hour for the first 12, and 0.39°C/hour for the next 12... (this can vary widely based upon insulation, humidity, and other factors. Vacuum radiant cooling will be considerably less than this...

 

[McPerth]

Of course, if the corpse is disposed in space, it will be quite difficult to find...

No it won't. Vacuum insulation and decomposition will make the body radiate like a beacon in the infra-red for months and it'll be visible even to today's sensors all the way to Alpha Centauri...

Forgotten to say in my quoted post:

and more so it is disposed while jump

In any case, as some had posted, it will probably radiate only for a few days, as most corpses in vacum, due to humidity evaporation, tend to mummify more than descompose.