Where to put the Criminals?
The State doesn’t exist any more, instead we are all operating in small communities. Where do we put someone when they’ve done something really wrong? We can’t lock them up as we don’t have the resources to look after them. We could banish them, make them someone else’s problem. Cut off a hand like the old days? Hang them?
I wanted the community in my book to not have capital punishment. I know it is still a thing in the US, but Washington State, where my main character lives, abolished the death penalty last year, and hasn’t had an execution since 2010. I needed to find another way.
I decided on a work camp. Somewhere to send the bad people away to work forever—isolated and free of any pleasure. It’s the US, so I added a moralistic element, created a religious sect who ran the camps. I read about the Free Presbyterians, and thought their future sect would make perfect foils to the evils in society.
“The Free Presbyterian ministers make it their life’s work to ensure the corrupt and the perverse pay their debt to society, toiling in the church’s fields. ”