When sentencing criminals who have caused harm to Verda or its citizens, it is an advantage to have a consistent approach. It relieves the nation (and ultimately the Queen) from a little of the responsibility in dealing with criminals; it allows the nation to make clear statements of loss when criminals who have offended Verda are caught and tried in other nations; and it reduces the scope for criticism from criminals’ friends and allies if they perceive (or disingenuously claim) that we are imposing unjustly long sentences.
Quoting Mr Justice Treaty, in his remarks when sentencing Gavin Dobbs and David Norris following the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993:
“A racist taunt, followed by a group charge towards the two young black men, and then the swallowing up of Stephen Lawrence, surrounded and put to the ground by all of you, shows a deliberately concerted attack. A knife was used to stab him with blows aimed to vulnerable parts of the body: once when he was upright at the start of the attack; the second when he was on the ground whilst the rest of you were gathered round aiming blows or kicks to put him or keep him on the ground.
The evidence does not prove so that I could be sure that either of you had a knife, but the person who used it did so with your knowledge and approval. That is apparent from the brief nature of the attack in which those who were unarmed did not themselves inflict blows or kicks of sufficient gravity to leave injury or involve themselves in a sustained attack as they would if this was a conventional plan to beat up. The attack lasted in the region of 10 seconds and then the whole group moved off together as one making its escape. I take the view that, in the circumstances, it does not matter that the knife was not in your hands.
The cohesive nature of the group tells its story. It is not as if, for example, one person unexpectedly did something that no one else expected or approved of. You, Dobson, repeatedly lied to keep Norris' name away from the police, a clear example of group loyalty.”
Sentencing is applied equally to all members of a raiding groups party: where the sentence is, for example, 10 days, all members of the raiding group must serve the sentence. This, in general, applies even if some members of the group did not actively break in, murder, or steal items. If a group acts as a whole, then the whole group suffers the penalty.
The serving of a fixed term of End Time will be the preferred sentence for all crimes. It may be preferable to impose a ‘reparations’ type sentence, but this should be considered exceptional, rather than the norm.
For general griefing: the sentence will be calculated in terms of reinforcements either broken or placed. The sentence will be 5 minutes of end time per reinforcement broken or placed. As an example, a raider breaks down a stone reinforced door and breaks a single iron reinforced chest: this would carry a sentence of 50 x 5 minutes for the door break, plus 250 x 5 minutes for the chest break, or a total of 1500 minutes, or 1 day. Similarly, a raider who places a stack of stone reinforced obsidian would serve 64 x 50 x 5 = 16,000 minutes, or 11.1 days. Finally, a raider destroys a wheat field of 256 unreinforced wheat plants without replanting, serving 256 * 5 = 1280 minutes, or just under 1 day.
For relatively light grief, that amounts to less than two days sentence, sentence may be suspended, but recorded to be added to the sentence for possible future crimes.
For mass griefing: water, or lava, or fire placement is time-consuming and difficult to clean, and carries a sentence of 15 minutes End Time per block affected by the grief. Naturally, the extent of damage may be difficult to accurately estimate, but should nevertheless give a justifiable basis for sentencing.
In the special case of lava/cobble-mountain grief, the land area affected forms the basis, and is added to the tariff as if the cobble blocks had been placed by hand. As an estimate, based on the cobble mountains at Mt Augusta in Civcraft 1.0, would be that the land area of 4,000 blocks were affected, plus a total of around 100,000 cobble blocks generated, giving 60,000 minutes for the lava placement, plus a further 500,000 minutes for the cobble block removal: 560,000 minutes, or 388 days.
The tariff therefore scales automatically with the severity of the crime, but also implies that our citizens should take care to reinforce, or otherwise protect, our assets in a manner consistent with their value.
Property damage caused in the course of breaking and entering is treated as griefing.
Additional sentencing is applied to cover direct losses resulting from theft of items, and judgement is made to determine the End Time served that is consistent with the value of the items lost.
The value of items lost during robberies and burglaries can vary dramatically. Furthermore, the value depends on the item rarity, and this can change as the server develops: commonplace items may become more scarce, and this should be considered carefully. As a general rule, End Time sentences should be made to reflect the time taken for the stolen items to be re-manufactured, gathered or bought.
For unique items, judgement should be used to determine an appropriate sentence. Unique items do not include named items, such as tools, weapons, given that it is possible to re-make and re-name other items as replacements. Rather, unique items pertain to things which are genuinely irreplaceable (for example dragon eggs) or are considered impossible to replace for the forseeable future of the server (e.g. coloured sheep in Civcraft 2.0 were disabled, except for those created at world generation time).
In cases where the stolen goods are located, for example in raiders’ bases, or if they are returned, then this should be used to adjust the time served downwards.
The wishes of those who have lost items to raiding, theft or burglary should be considered in sentencing. However, it is not guaranteed that the aggrieved parties’ wishes will be granted; by definition, aggrieved parties cannot be impartial, and may (understandably) err on the side of stiffer penalties than would be strictly just.
Where livestock are killed, the sentence should be comparable to the time lost to replace the livestock. This may be either by re-breeding the lost animals, or gathering those roaming in the wild. In this regard, there is some leeway in the manner in which the sentence is carried out: it may be preferable to require the criminal to replace the livestock, rather than serve end time, and this should be decided on a case-by-case basis. In particular, livestock (as with farm) griefing is often carried out by a hungry traveller, rather than a genuine criminal, so that leniency may be preferable to harsh sentencing.
The murder of a player carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 days End Time. This may be adjusted upwards, depending on the motivation, circumstances and severity of the crime, and includes factors such as racial, homophobic or similar motivation.
End Time served should be further extended to cover additional losses with regard to prosecuting the crime. Examples of incidental losses may include time spent camping logout spots; time spent chasing raiders which would otherwise be spent more constructively; payment of bounty hunters. Typically these will be charged on a 1:1 basis, where time lost (collectively) is added to the sentence.