Sector 102 // Titan Penal Colony
Welcome, Dredd heads! Today's article is all about Titan. This is one location you don't want to visit: the space colony jail for corrupt judges.
Titan
The moon of Titan is a location that all Judges pray they are never unlucky enough to visit. Titan is the location of the Justice Department's penal colony, where corrupt Judges are sentenced, and Judges that do not fit into Mega-City one life are transferred to serve as wardens, a punishment almost as grievous as the life of a prisoner.
Titan is the largest moon of the gas giant Saturn, measuring 5150 kilometres in diameter, orbiting Saturn every sixteen days with a length of day of equal duration. Slightly larger than Mercury, Titan could be classed as a planet in its own right. Titan is an orange orb from space. Its atmosphere comprises thick clouds of nitrogen, ammonia, and methane, making it impossible to view the planet's surface from space. Titan's atmospheric pressure is sixty percent greater than at the bottom of Earth's oceans. Whilst the surface of Titan is covered by ice and rock, the temperature can reach lows of -180 degrees Celsius and Liquid methane rains down on rust-coloured methane oceans. It's a depressing place, a place that can break the corrupt.
The Justice Department chose Titan as the site of its penal colony because of its abundant water and atmosphere. Before construction could begin on the facility, robot probes scoured the surface of Titan for a suitable location not too far from water reserves; soon, the probes discovered a suitable continent about the size of Australia. With the location found, the Engineer Corps set up a series of force fields to generate an energy dome to protect from the methane rains. With the dome in place, construction finally began on the prison in March 2062 and was completed in January 2064. It was commemorated with a ceremony the then Deputy Chief Judge Veitch attended.
The first judges sent to Titan were personnel found guilty of violent offences against citizens and fellow judges. In 2071, in the wake of the Great Atomic War, Titan was flooded with judges charged with aiding and abetting the disgraced President of the USA, Robert L. Booth. No sooner had those judges been shipped off the world when Chief Geneticist Morten Judd staged a murderous coup against Chief Judge Fargo. Judd was exiled, and his followers were sentenced to Titan for life.
In subsequent years, Titan became home to Rico Dredd - the corrupt clone brother of Judge Dredd - and a group of judges led by Judge Grice, who violently opposed a city-wide referendum proposing a return to democracy for the people. In 2115, Grice led a mass escape from Titan, resulting in the near-total destruction of the prison complex and the brutal murders of the feared Governor Khurtz and all his subordinates.
The rebuilding of Titan Penitentiary began in 2117 and was completed in 2118. The new prison is smaller and rises higher into the atmosphere to make future breakouts more difficult. The Justice Department also took this opportunity to improve security in the form of auto laser emplacements around the prison perimeter and explosive implants fitted to the chests of inmates. These have made the possibility of further escapes all but impossible—but still, the prisoners try.
Titan Government
The Mega City One Justice Department similarly manages Titan as a sector house, with a solitary leader supported by various department heads and an army of combat-ready personnel. However, the distance between Earth and Titan (800 million miles) means that the Titan commanders are given the authority to wield the power of life and death over their prisoners.
The head judge is called the governor, who has little contact with the prisoners and is only concerned with the general administration of the prison and conducting a brief interview with new prisoners, basically to threaten them with punishments more terrible than the dire life they will lead over the next twenty years if they step out of line. The governor is assisted by the chief warden, the head of the judges who keep the inmates in line, and the chief medical and technical officers who care for the inmates and maintain the prison's security. The governor is typically selected from former sector chiefs or Space Corps commanders put out to pasture. The other members of his command can come from any age group or justice career. In 2125, the present governor of Titan is Bale, a former SJS officer. His command staff include Chief Medical Officer Korsen, Chief Technical Officer Bough and Chief Warden Slanner
Governor Bale
Archilles Bale was a distinguished SJS operative who masterminded city-wide hunts for corrupt judges. He was known as 'Black Eye' by those who came to fear his arrival at their sector house. At 51 years of age, Bale was severely injured in an explosion caused by renegade Judge Currick, losing both his left arm and leg. Bale was fitted with prosthetic replacements in later years but had already been seconded to Academy of Law tutoring duties, a post he secretly despised. When offered the role of Titan governor in the wake of former governor Khurtz's murder, Bale had at last found a position where he could once again wield authority over corrupt judges.
Bale has been Titan governor for seven years and is pleased with his posting. However, he will occasionally have live entertainment shuttled over from Earth, his favourite ultra-violent Hondo City Tri-D movies set in the present or historical depicting the Japan of the primitive twentieth century. Bale is focused, determined and merciless to those who oppose his will, whether prisoners or warders. Though Bale has not had a warder executed to date, it would not be beyond his will to do so if provoked.
Other Staff of note:
Chief Medical Officer Korsen is an ex-Space Corps officer who earned merit fighting the Kleggs on board the 'Fargo.' Now trying to make his way home, Korsen has become stuck as Titans Med Judge.
Chief Technical Officer Bough is a female tech judge. Not much info on her.
Chief Warden Slanner-Hard arsed, beats and abuses the prisoners and is a pretty mean soul.
Titan Wardens- Recruited from ISO cube Judges, tho a few Judges even volunteer or are forced to serve. It is a soul-destroying isolated life, and the guards are prone to violent behaviour and become nihilistic. A term of Titan service is six months, but most guards serve multiple terms as they become addicted to the power over Judges. Discipline within their ranks is lax, leading to guards decorating their uniforms with nicknames, symbols and spray paint.
Arriving at Titan
For the entire twelve-hour duration of the flight, SJS judges watch the prisoner intently to curtail any thoughts of escape, though they would first have to escape handcuffs and chains. Once the shuttle lands on Titan, the SJS turns the prisoner over to the Titan warders. Before they depart to return to Earth, the SJS speak with the governor, providing additional information concerning the prisoner. The new inmates are marched off to the med-bay, where their faces receive bionic modifications to enable the criminals to survive outdoors, beneath the energy dome protecting Titan from the outside elements. The conditions within the dome are extremely unfriendly to Earth life but tolerable when filtered through breathing apparatus known as 'muzzles'’ welded and bolted onto the prisoner's face with the minimum of anesthetic. The muzzle is permanent, worn by the former judge for the rest of their life, barring extensive and costly reconstruction surgery back on Earth, priced well beyond the meagre finances of Mega-City One judges. The prisoner's two decades are intentionally monotonous, designed to break the convict's spirit and, in time, with counselling from the resident psycho Judge, hoped to rebuild the prisoners's respect for law and order.
However, when finally released, the former judge will never be allowed back into the Justice Department. The prisoner's day begins with a wake-up call blasted through the prison block's speakers from a single pacifier riot gunshot. In 2125, the prisoners each have a cell and are fed from a motorized vending unit delivering hi-nutrient cubes twice daily. Toiletry facilities are incorporated within the cell, next to the prisoner's bunk. Within a quarter of an hour after wakeup, the prisoners are released from their cells and forced into a chain gang, handcuffed and bound, as they are marched single file by the Titan wardens to an open-topped transport that carries them beyond the dome to outdoor mines two miles south of the main building.
There, the prisoners are released from their restraints at gunpoint and given las-drills to spend the rest of their sixteen-hour day mining the Titan rock for raw materials that will be shipped back to Mega-City One and to the Earth colonies to be used for construction. It is no easy matter to toil in the mines of Titan - the weather is hellishly cold, even within the energy dome, and to stop working for even a minute is enough to freeze the blood. The muzzles provide oxygen, coupled with filtered and recombined Titan gasses for breathing purposes, but not enough to stop panic attacks and the threat of suffocation if the prisoners do not learn quickly how to control their breathing. The energy dome allows gravity generators to lighten the local air pressure to make life slightly more comfortable for the prisoners. Later, the labourers are shuttled back to the main building, fed and watered and receive medical care if necessary before sleeping in preparation for the following work shift.
Relations between prisoners range from friendly to violent depending on the former judges' natural disposition before they arrived on Titan and how well (or poorly) they have adapted to life in the mines. The only time that prisoners are allowed to converse is during their hard labour, challenging at the best of times due to constant breathing difficulties. No matter how prisoners relate to one another, they generally regard the governor and Titan wardens with nothing less than outright hostility. It is the governor's mandate to see that his prisoners' wills are broken and, from their emotional wrecks, new, obedient men and women emerge to cause the Justice Department no further difficulties. The governor rarely meets the inmates, usually only to declare temporary changes to their routine or to punish all the prisoners for the indiscretions of one or a small number; on Titan, all men are equal and share the same fate (except for the command staff). The Titan wardens are brutal and sadistic by design, though some genuinely enjoy inflicting pain on their former comrades. If ever there is to be a break-out, the prisoners will first target these swine for the kickings and lashings they have suffered at their hands.
Punishment
As if a sentence to twenty years on Titan was not enough, troublesome inmates can expect severe punishments at the governor's whim. Minor indiscretions such as theft of penitentiary property or skirmishes with other prisoners will result in the culprit being deprived of food for a week whilst still being forced to work a regular shift. Prisoner violence directed against the warders is punishable by a severe beating in a private, sealed room at the other end of the prison complex known to the prisoners as the 'blood bank.' A more extreme punishment is to be sealed in a Coffin, a broken refrigeration unit welded to the outside wall of one of the storage bunkers; the prisoner is fed once a week through a slot and is deprived of any form of hygiene. Should a warder or command personnel be murdered by a prisoner, the sentence is death by hanging out in the courtyard on a signal given by the governor, an event that all prisoners are ordered to attend if they do not want to donate to the blood bank. In the past, the infamous Governor Khurtz used prisoners as guinea pigs to test torture techniques upon for the eyes of paying representatives from other mega-city justice systems. Now that Khurtz is dead, killed by one of the prisoners he tortured, the Justice Department has assigned a monitor to ensure that the subsequent governors are not tempted to follow Khurtz's line of behaviour.
Freedom
When a judge enters Titan, he is generally prepared to die there; such is the sense of hopelessness instilled in him by the facial surgery, his living and working conditions and the unremitting brutality of the warders. But prisoners are allowed to keep track of the time they spend in incarceration, one of the few luxuries the warders afford them, though some regard it as pure psychological torture. Nevertheless, twenty years after they arrived, the prisoner is summoned for an extensive medical by the CMO before being given fresh, nondescript clothing and marched to the governor's office for one final lecture on discipline and respect for the law. The governor does not shake hands with the prisoner - he was once a judge and cannot be underestimated - but ends the meeting by conveying the Chief Judge's wish that the prisoner can now contribute to Mega-City One. With five hundred credits and a pay card that will grant him two weeks’ stay in reasonable rented accommodation, the former prisoner boards the Titan shuttle - often passing new inmates - and returns to Earth
Most former prisoners choose to live in Mega-City One for the rest of their days. A majority manage to secure paid employment, a testament to the drive and motivation drilled into them all those decades ago in the Academy of Law. Those who do not successfully adapt to civilian life sometimes leave the city to search for some new meaning in their lives. Others fall into old habits and join street gangs/thugs/criminal organizations and take over them using their superior skills. These ex-cons soon gain the attention of the Justice Department and are stamped out quickly before they can bring more shame to the Department.
Famous Prisoners
Prisoner 17544 (Judge Diggle)- Abraham Diggle saw action in the 2nd Robot War. Diggle stole weapons discarded during the retreat of Nero Narco's Forces and planned on selling them on the black market. The guns were later used in a murder, and Wally Squad traced the weapons back to Diggle. Diggle is now in his 4th year and seeks a means to escape. Diggle’s cropped hair is now long, covering his neck tattoos, and he has no teeth left due to Warden's beatings.
Prisoner 17228 (Judge Barnes)- Noel 'Bastich' Barnes, a block judge turned rogue. They used heavy-handed tactics on criminals and were arrested for murder. Barnes suffered severe frostbite on Titan, so now he has a fake foot and arm.
That's it for now. I plan to add to the criminal list as names pop up (Like Aimee Nixon and Grice). Feel free to comment below, and thanks for reading.
