United Galaxies Council.	UGC Prison Ships.		United Galaxies Council.
The UGC has several thousand prison ships. As prisons go, however, the term "prison ship" is a less a misnomer, as it is blatant false advertising. To be assigned to a prison ship as an Inmate-Crew, you First have to plead A Fairly Average Prison Ship, The Cargo Ship Astral Queen. guilty to all charges as filed, no matter what the facts of the case are; You can't plead down the offense. You plead down the SENTENCE. Second, you can not be a flight nor re-offend risk; The prison ships are STRICTLY minimum security prisons. In fact, the prison ship's Captain-Warden may, at their discretion, award particularly GOOD behavior and work with liberty; That is, the Captain-Warden may grant a limited parole to crew (inmates) who have been particularly good to the ship- They may actually LEAVE THE SHIP for not more than 12 hours, subject to any restrictions the Captain-Warden may impose- A temperance Captain-Warden, for example, may order that no Liberty-approved Inmate-Crew may visit any establishment where vices (alcohol, sex, drug, or etc) is offered; This also may be Inmate-Crew specific (a sex-crime related offender may be specifically ordered not to visit any strip clubs, while another convicted of killing someone while drunk may be ordered not to go near any bars, for example). The Inmate-Crew may also receive unlimited visitors on-board, even overnight conjugal visits (provided they can work it out with their cell mate). Only those convicted of Capital Crimes (murder, treason, etc) are prohibited from receiving Liberty, but that is little loss to them. Life isn't EXACTLY all roses, however. Firstly, with the exception of Liberty and Late Sleepers, the ship is run on a boot-camp system; Reveille is 0600. All Inmate-Crew are REQUIRED to be up, racks made, showered, shaved, dressed, and ready for morning meal by 0630. The only exceptions are "Late Sleepers", those who had mid-watch (2330-0330) and SIQ's (Sic In Quarters), or the so called "binnacle list" (those who are either sick or injured and unable to work). Even SIQ's must reveille and be accounted for (though they may return to their racks, or head to sickbay immediately after). Second, Corporal Punishment is VERY MUCH "in effect" on board a Prison Ship; Sleeping On Watch: 10 lashes. Insubordination (disobeying a Crew-Staff's order): 50 lashes Fighting: 100 lashes Striking a Crew-Staff: 500 lashes is staggered applications (generally 50 every day until complete) Endangerment Of Crew: 1,000 lashes in staggered applications (generally 50 every day until complete) Drunk On Watch: 1,000 lashes, NON-STAGGERED application Thirdly, the length of your sentence doesn't matter; Once the ship deploys, you're stuck on it until she's recalled. Your 5 year sentence might just stretch out a while. It doesn't MATTER if your sentence ends at noon the same morning she's scheduled to get underway at 0600; You have to stay for the full deployment. Last, but certainly not least, is the REASON Prison Ships exist; There are, occasionally, jobs either too dangerous or too low-paying to entice ANYONE to take the job. This is where the Inmate-Crew of a Prison Ship steps in and takes over; Hard vacuum (deep space) mining, shipping cargo through hazardous sections of space (such as through active War zones) and/or of extremely hazardous cargos (such as highly flammable fuels, like hydrogen and/or unstable explosives, such as Detonex, used in anti-matter bombs). To give an insight into how dangerous the Prison Ship's life is, here's a few example case studies: Vacuum Mining has an average DEATH RATE due to accidents of 1-in-3; Injury rates reach 100%, Inmate-Crew and Crew-Staff alike. These mining operations are critical to the survival of the UGC, as 90% of the raw minerals of the UGC come from asteroids, and nearly 100% of water for desert worlds (such as Fantoma, Mars, etc) come or came from comets- This too is part of the vacuum mining. In the hazardous cargos category, Meneranorgize had a plague outbreak. A VICIOUSLY virulent one. Prison Ships eventually had to take plague samples to Rinore, where it was to be studied toWards the development of a cure. 10 Prison Ships, the Virtue, Western, Tower, Red Fox (a medical prison ship, specializing in psychiatric patients), White Mouse, Angel, Star Hunter, Unionville (not to be confused with the UES UNIONVILLE, SDF-23), Tracer, and Detoxed (another medical prison ship, this one specializing in drug and alcohol abuse) were dispatched with the samples. Of these, Detoxed disappeared entirely, Tower and Western were destroyed when their ENTIRE CREW (Staff-Crew and Crew-Inmate alike) all died enr, and Virtue, White Mouse, Star Hunter, and Tracer, all had their cargos breached. Their crews, totaling almost 32,000 all told, suffered a 90% casualty rate. For the math impaired, that's 29,000 dead Inmate-Crew and Crew-Staff)- The exact number was 28,931. Only Red Fox and Unionville got through with the cargo fully intact. However, their sacrifice resulted in the survival of 30 billion on Meneranorgize when the cure was finally developed- Too late for the crews of White Mouse and Star Hunter (Star Hunter's crew, after off-loading their cargo into a supra-sealed containers, then flew their ship into a sun; White Mouse's crew did not elect to commit suicide). Stats: Specific stats vary by the vsl, however, regardless ANYTHING else, Prison Ships do NOT carry ship grade weaps of any sort. The danger that the Crew-Inmates may try to overpower the Staff-Crew and take the vsl "a pirate." Because of the highly dangerous nature of their missions, however, Prison Ships do have an EXCELLENT full-force Barrier field. In fact, UGC Variable Force Field were originally developed with Mining Ships in mind; While the miners needed protection from above and the sides, they needed the dorsal aspect clear to gain access to the asteroid or comet being worked. Crew: The exact crew numbers also vary, based on the ship's function and nature of deployment. Only certain critical ships crew are fixed, as follows: Ship's Captain: Must be rated to ALL classes of civilian vsl. Their militry rank equivalent would be somewhere between Captain and Admiral in the Spacy/Patrol, or Colonel/General in the Marine/Army/ASF. Many are retired or reserve militry, and ALL must be at least former militry (by law, though this is often overlooked to convenience). Ship's Mate or the "First Mate": Must be rated to at LEAST the vsl they are serving aboard. They also draw the collateral duty of Security Chief and Chief Engineer, as well as others on occasion. Chief Medical Officer (CMO): Because this IS a prison, after all, the Inmate-Crew would CONSTANTLY be trying to get drugs by faking ailments. The CMO's main duty is to oversee the medical department- There are more than enough doctors convicted of one crime or another to handle most medical issues on board. Senior Clinic Nurse: The Senior Clinic Nurse's ONLY job is to oversee the drugs and sharp sickbay instruments on board. If it's sharp, make you happy, or otherwise controlled medical materials, it BELONGS to the SCN, they just "allow" you to take it at their discretion. They may, at their discretion, refuse to release materials to anyone- Of course, that person then has the right to appeal to the CMO, but don't bother telling the SCN off about it. Any disrespect IS classified as "Disrespect to Staff-Crew", and draws 20 lashes. AND the SCN gets the satisfaction of knowing you got those lashes for being stupid. Security Detachment: There are SUPPOSED to be 10 Security Personnel (guards) to every 100 Inmate-Crew. Sometimes there actually ARE, at that. Pay: Life sucks if you're Inmate-Crew; You get 10credit per day for unskilled, untrained, and possibly illiterate crewmen. Those with technical training might get 50credit per diem; Doctors and other highly skilled crew could get as "much" as 1,000credit per month. Don't bother asking for a raise. Life's pretty sweet if you're Crew-Staff, however; The lowliest guard gets, at minimum, 25,000credit per month starting out as a trainee. The SCN draws 40,000credit/month, the CMO 100,000credit/month, and the Ship's Mate draw a minimum check of a half a million credits per year; Maybe as high as 10 million, depending on the size of the crew. Captains have it sweetest, with a LOCKED PAYRATE of 100 million credits per annum. Crew-Staff also draw a share of the cruise; The line gets 50% off the top, Captains receive 1 full share of the remainder, the Ship's Mate and CMO's a 3/4 share, SCN's a 1/2 share, and Security Personnel a 1/4 share. Other highly specialized additional Crew-Staff are aWarded their share based on their relative position, and these specialists usually DON'T have to make the full trip. Deployments: Length of deployment varies on assignment; Rarely is it less than 6 months, unless it's a high-risk critical cargo (such as the plague ships mentioned above). Inmate-Crew have to stay the entire deployment, as does the Captain-Warden, with the rare exception (usually for Inmate-Crews this is injury too severe to continue on-board; Inmate-Crews are buried in space). Crew-Staff are rotated out on a six-month basis, though often they elect to remain for extended deployments (to draw extra pay). These deployments can easily last five or more years- More than one 3-year conviction has turned into a ten years incarceration when a miner ship deployed to recover highly valuable minerals in some forgotten asteroid belt. Types Of Vsls: Any commercial vsl is available, but no militry ones (for obvious reasons). One of the more common ones seen are Forger-Class agri-ships and Sojourner-Class cargo vsls.