THE COLONY FACILITY
The actual facility is very much like a “Super-Alcatraz”.
It’s located on a sub-tropical island that’s approximately 17 square miles square. The island sits in the planet Erus’ largest ocean. The island is accessible only by three mag-lift rail trains connecting it to the mainland. The mainland is 120 miles from the island, making a swim to freedom virtually impossible. A bottomless chasm surrounds the prison facility—making any tunnel to freedom an impossibility, as well.
The spaceport, mining operations and barracks for Confederate troops are all located on the mainland.
Colony has three separate wings—the male population quarters, the female population quarters and the administration wing. All three massive wings connect to a central domed hub that houses the work areas, maximum security and prison mess halls.
In the case of a riot or incursion in one of the wings, that part of the facility is hydraulically-lowered underground and sealed by four-foot thick titanium steel doors—making escape a highly-unlikely proposition.
The entire Colony population is 181,000 prisoners.
Colony’s population is an eclectic mix of political prisoners (about 30%), hardened criminals (60%) and mental cases (10%).
The racial breakdown of the population is roughly 32% non-human to 68% human.
Of that population, the ratio of male to female is about fifteen males to every one female.
Many prisoners on Colony believe that the system will eventually release them after fulfilling the term of the sentence. Prisoners who have been terminated are registered as “paroled”, but there is no parole from Colony, except through death.
Prisoner conduct is regulated by an army of Con-Fed guards, overseen by the Board of Compliance and the Governor.
The political prisoners are, for the most part, good men who have been treated unfairly. However, this doesn’t spare them from an untimely demise --once they can no longer work or cross the wrong criminal inmate.
Many of the political prisoners of COLONY are there because they preferred a life of misery to conscription into the Confederacy’s brutal armed services.
The prisoners often refer to themselves as -- "Pooches"
The #1 rule amongst the prison population of the COLONY: “Pooches must not rob Pooches”. Those who do are called "Poochscrewers” and are looked upon with contempt.
Inmate letters & Other Communications
Letters to friends and family are strictly managed. (the Con-Fed doesn’t want the outside world to know the true nature of Colony.) Maintaining contact with the outside world is strictly monitored by the Colony authorities. Letters and electronic communications are censored (opened by prison staff) or where the Governor and the Board of Compliance specifically requires messages to be censored. Special “flatphones” are available for the guard staff to make messages that can be transmitted via subspace to people on the outside. However, prisoners are discouraged from any contact with the outside world. Occasionally, the more cunning and adept prisoner will be able to smuggle out a message with a carrier signal embedded in a guard’s original electronic communication.
Work in prison
All prisoners on Colony are required to work, either in the prison sweat shops, the Confederacy’s Starship yard or in the Erusite mining camp on the site of the old asteroid impact called “Wallace Crater” or the “Wallyhole”. The mining and other work operations help to reduce the cost of the entire Colony system. Fifteen hours work days are compulsory for inmates in Colony. Mining Erusite is the primary activity that the prisoners are utilized for in work details, with the main site being a massive crater located some 50 miles from the compound. The mining conditions are extremely harsh and on-site fatalities are a common occurrence.
Meeting weekly work quotas may allow a prisoner a small wage in prison credits. Prison credits are redeemable for limited items in the Colony Hub PX .
Rights, privileges and discipline
There is a system of discipline in Colony which is administered by the head of the prison (Governor Mason) and by a group of supervisors from outside the prison called the Board of Compliance. Discipline can involve things like increasing the time a convict spends in Colony, removal of the inmates’ privileges, putting them in a rehabilitation special unit if they are violent or disruptive and even taking back to court if they’ve have committed a serious crime. But, generally—a repeat offender is summarily executed without trial.
A prisoner is not allowed contact with anyone in the media. Ever.
The inmates do have some minimal privileges such as having a personal entertainment systems, books, periodicals and watching pre-recorded (and board-approved) vids, making purchases from the prison shop with credits earned in prison, fitness facilities and dining privileges with other prisoners.
Their rights have been taken away. But privileges can more easily be taken away. This, coupled with fear, is the instrument of control on Colony. Alien and human males are required to wear an issued Colony uniform but female prisoners are granted more latitude in dress.
Issues affecting ALIEN groups in population
Each wing of the prison has policy statements concerning alien relations clearly displayed. It is a disciplinary offence for a prisoner to use racially abusive language.
Each wing of prisoners has a race/species relations liaison officer, who deals with complaints from aliens about inmate discrimination and with problems or queries on specific needs of a biological nature. It is imperative for the Con-Feds to keep the various alien races under control to minimize the potential for a race riot.
An alien prisoner can also file a grievance to the Board of Compliance.
Religion
Religious gathering and worship is strictly forbidden. Religion engenders hope in individuals and hope is the enemy of all of what Colony represents.
If an inmate is caught exercising their faith, a Board representative will evaluate whether the prisoner should be remanded for “spiritual rehabilitation”. Although religious observances are strictly forbidden, the population clandestinely celebrates on certain occasions. Many of the correctional officers overlook the Bial Traphu’s faith, since their refusal to speak in any language other than their own masks the nature of their observances.
Drugs in Prison
Drug use on Colony is commonplace. There has been some controversy debated by Board members over use of hard and soft drugs by prisoners, some feeling that an approved amphetamine would significantly increase mining production. In many cases, the Board will turn a blind eye to the drug traffic in Colony.
Blackmarketeer Perry Callisto exclusively runs the illegal drug traffic in the Colony population.
Although only a handful of inmates were convicted for drug related crimes, 1 in 5 prisoners will become addicted to some type of drug while incarcerated in Colony.
Indoctrination Procedures
The first place the human or alien prisoner will come to, upon arriving at Colony, is the Mainland Reception & Processing Center located at Erus’ only landlocked spaceport.
All prisoners are strip searched when entering reception. Their clothes are taken away and they’re issued regulation prison clothing. The prisoners are occasionally allowed to keep few personal items, but most items are taken to a reclaiming center. This process is euphemistically referred to as called the prisoner's "entry fee".
The prisoners, both alien and human, must go thru a bath or shower decontamination process. Each prisoner is injected with a prison I.D. marker chip and given a case identification number.
An officer then takes the prisoner to the holding cell or dormitory. If the prisoner has any questions, The Board of Compliance provides a booklet explaining the prison rules, of which, each prisoner is required to memorize.
Soon after their arrival on Colony, the prisoner has a reception interview. This determines the inmate’s aptitude towards specific tasks that might be beneficial to the overall productivity of the facility.
Any prisoner entering with a terminal or contagious disease is immediately euthanized as a preventative measure for the Colony population.
After processing, the prisoner boards the Mag-lift for the 120 mile ride to the Colony Maximum Security Facility.
Health Care
The prisoner is required to be scanned by a member of the prison healthcare team on their arrival in the main facility. There, the Colony healthcare team will conduct scans for drug or alcohol addiction, catastrophic viral infections or specific biological needs for the non-human species. Radioactively-contaminated or virally infected prisoners are terminated immediately in a second screening process.
Female prisoners are scanned to determine if they are entering the facility pregnant. The women's healthcare team routinely injects the entry-level females with a contraceptive that chemically sterilizes the inmate permanently. The males are similarly injected with a sexual inhibitor. (Blackmarket Kingpin Perry Callisto, routinely provides a temporary antidote to the inhibitor that is extremely popular with many inmates.)
Pregnant prisoners must sign an agreement to a place the infant into the custody of the Confederacy. Once signed, the inmate will never see the child again.
Women using their reproductive organs for smuggling are subjected to an immediate radical hysterectomy.
Living Quarters
In a cell approximately 9'6"X7'6", two adults (generally of the same planetary origin) are forced to live out their remaining days. Facility cells are intentionally low-tech. The doors are designed deliberately to be low-tech to foil incarcerated electronic experts from tampering with the lock mechanisms. The prisoner living quarters are deep underground, barring the possibility of tunneling out. If that was to occur, millions of tons of ocean water would quickly halt any progress.
The complex consists of two, massive subterranean prison dormitory wings (male and female) with five officers for each of the 25 tiers, 600 rooms per tier and two occupants per Plexiglas room. The officers are stationed in a central area behind Plexiglas and travel the massive tiers on heavily armed, Segway-like, two-wheel devices. The doors to the cell tiers can only be opened individually by guards with a DNA-encoded passkey.
Prisoner Hierarchy
Within the confines of the Colony prison, operating in considerable secrecy in order to shield their members from detection by Con-Fed authorities, there exists many organized gangs. In addition, there is reluctance on the part of prison administration to acknowledge the existence of such gangs. Therefore, specific information on prison gangs and its leadership is sparse.
With significant numbers of incidents of rape, assault, and even murder in prison, it is common for groups of inmates to associate with each other for reasons of personal safety and protection within the walls. These groups have grown to such a large size that their influence inside the prison has created significant organized networks.
Not only is protection successfully achieved, but also ancillary crimes such as the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and other types of contraband are easily facilitated.
Essentially, Colony prisoners exist as "servants of the Confederacy." Because of this, prison officials are generally unchecked in the administration of their prisons, and many blatantly inhumane policies have been implemented to control prison populations.
In many planetary systems that fall under Con-Fed control, a state of crisis existed and many citizens organized themselves into cell groups for self-protection. It is those protective associations which have continued to grow, even after the members’ incarceration, that have developed into many of Colony’s current prison gangs. Ironically, many these well-meaning organized resistance cells, formed to oppose the tyranny of the Confederacy, have mutated into a group every bit as amoral as their hated captors.
Colony gangs have expanded their activities outside the walls and these gangs now represent one of the newest and most dangerous organized threats to the Confederacy—a criminally-led rebellion. Membership in the various Colony gangs may constitute as much as 15%-20% of the total prison population.
Of those, several have emerged as the most powerful and influential: The earthlings have The Millennium Mafia (led by Perry Callisto) and The Sci-Punks (who use chemistry and smuggled technology to terrorize fellow inmates), the Byrianis have The Ustra Mila, the women have two rival gangs: The Silicone Cindies and The Wah-Wahs (led by Mother Mae Hi) with The Goy Brotherhood and The Alpha Zombies making up the remaining factions. They all maintain the membership by a requirement of murder or the spilling of another's blood.
It is widely believed by Colony officials that many gangs have adopted a policy of "blood-in/blood-out," whereby prospective members are not considered for membership unless they first spill the blood of a rival gang inmate or a prison staff member. This insures existing gang members that the recruit is not an undercover Con-Fed enforcer and that the initiate possesses the courage necessary to carry out their bidding. Additionally, once a member is accepted into the organization, he may not leave the gang without his own blood being spilled.
So--once a member, always a member.
In this case, new inmates who have been affiliated with an outside rebel or dissident faction are immediately accepted as members with no questions asked.
Other factors which seem to govern the selection process for Colony prison gang members include the species background of the recruit and gender. Because of racial considerations which underlies much of a gang's basic philosophies, a prospective member's race and species is one of the first recruitment variables to be considered by the gang.
Other considerations may be as follows:
A. The sharing of strong beliefs: political, religious, etc.
B. The sharing of a particular lifestyle e.g., members who were space pirates, bootleggers, terrorists or other career criminal pursuits on the outside.
C. Being a "stand-up convict" or a badass who has a physically imposing appearance and a propensity towards violence.
In return for membership and status in the prison gang, the recruit enjoys the power, prestige, influence and protection which the gang offers.
Once identified as a possible candidate for recruitment, the gang may require any number of initiation acts. The initiation will vary from gang to gang but most cases will require the prospective new member to perform a violent act on either another inmate or a correctional officer in order to prove his worth.
In some cases, gang members holding leadership roles have even offered to exchange gang information for favorable treatment from Colony officials. These "Poochscrewers” will frequently roam freely within the prison population by virtue of their achieved status in the leadership of the gang. This is the case with blackmarket czar, Perry Callisto—the head of the Millennium Mafia.
Leadership of the more sophisticated prison gangs is usually invested in a single strong leader, but in other cases, gangs may be formed as committees or councils to make collective decisions.
Although the prison gangs operate somewhat differently from one another, their prevailing characteristics are relatively common.
Prison staff members and Con-Fed regulars are tolerated only as a necessary evil and members are directed not to associate with any prison officials.
Because the administration and staff represent everything prison gangs oppose, a relatively high incidence of violence has been directed toward staff members. Gangs are "anti-administration" and do not permit the staff to in any way impede the efforts of the gang. Most gangs choose to operate in secrecy in spite of the fact that some gangs wear tattoos or "colors" indicating their group affiliation. Generally, members are required to know from visual observation the identity of fellow members in their own organization. In large gangs, members identify themselves with tattoos bearing the logos and names of their gang affiliation.