Hi quietlyDevious,
thanks for your answer. Glad you enjoy the script.
quietlyDevious wrote:
The Way I thought it was going to go...When I originally downloaded the courtroom script and decided I was going to submit to the court, I thought I was going to be taken in front of the Judge to be arraigned for my crimes. I could plea bargain for a reduced sentence or plead not guilty and take my chances with the jury (knowing the sentence would be harsher).
If I plea bargain, Judge would sentence me, then verify the sentence was carried out. If not, collateral would be released, otherwise, the case would be complete.
If I decided I had a good case, I could plead not guilty. Then submit evidence that proves my innocence (Pics, Information, etc) and let the jury decide if I was guilty or innocent. If found innocent, the case would be over. If found guilty, the Judge would sentence me. Once the sentence was carried out the Judge would determine if the task was complete. Here again, if not, collateral would be released.
This appeals to me because there is a chance that I get away with something ... but maybe we all secretly want the punishment
The idea of being able to "get away" with a crime at the risk of a harsh punishment otherwise sounds appealing.
Yet I don't think it is reasonable to do it the way, you describe.
In a real court, the prosecutors office starts investigating the case long before they decide whether or not to bring it to court. During this time they already evaluated evidence for and against the suspect. They bring the case before court if and only if they suppose they can prove beyond reasonable doubt the suspect is guilty.
In my opinion your Idea would require a real prosecutor who could do real investigations. For crimes like 'self gratification' it would be difficult to prove you did it. De facto the prosecutor would need to catch you red handed and record a video.
On the other hand, if the courtroom doesn't have to follow 'in dubio pro reo' how could you possibly prove you didn't masturbate.
There's another thing. Your suggestion would change the role of the jury in the script. At the moment the job is looking at the evidence and consider if the user has completed the punishment. I don't know if this would work, especially as it may create a lot of borderline cases.
The only viable solution I see to have a feature like this is to decide at random. At a chance of maybe one in five you could get away if you plea 'not guilty'. But to me this is like adding a 'punish me harder' button a user can press at lib. It takes away the thrill of being uncertain.
quietlyDevious wrote:
Criminal Record and Probation
I do like the Criminal Record feature. One possible option in regards to probation. If a crime is severe enough or you are in front of the court too often, you are put on probation for XX days, during which your sentences are harsher and you are unable to sign out of this feature. Every time you break probation, the duration starts at 0 days and the length of probation is increased. You could also make mandatory visits during probation, maybe just a check-in (automated) or maybe a task that must be done. For the most violent offenders, maybe they are on-call and have xx hours from when they receive an email to report to the court.
I think you get my idea.
I hope I got the idea. Again something worth considering. As with your other suggestion I see some pitfalls when thinking about how to do it.
Giving out a more severe punishment if a user submits to court "to early" after his last sentence, should be possible.
But I have objections against the 'check-in' and the on 'call feature'.
At the moment you can use courtroom if you feel you "need to be punished". You open it, confess your crime, do your sentence and it's done.
The 'check-in' and even more the 'on call' feature would be a constant intrusion into everyday-life for a longer period of time. This is something for a long term blackmail scenario. There are scripts like these and I don't use them. I want a forseeable defined end. On the other hand I want to have to go through the scenario once I started it. So for me courtroom has a good combination. Being quite, but not completely sure what will happen and being forced to accept a punishment I maybe didn't want. Yet knowing after I did it, it's done.
The second point is of technical nature. Courtroom does almost everyhing while running on the local computer. The server is only used to store evidence and outcome. As long as you don't open the script, nothing will happen. Timed jobs like sending mails have to be done on the server as there's no guarantee the user has the script running at the moment it should send a mail. This would transform courtroom from mainly client-based application to a server-based one.
quietlyDevious wrote:
One Question; Does the courtroom script work on the Android App?
I don't know. It doesn't use any exotic functions, so I wouldn't expect major problems. But I didn't test it so far.
There's one important thing. Courtroom relies on several settings stored on the local system. If you want to use it on several devices it's essential to keep the file 'data.properties' in sync on all of them.
It may be an interesting challenge to add some option for server-synchronisation.
Regards
cgut2001