Jail times + Fines

[Mooks]

I was recently arrested for GTA, Operating a chopshop and possesion of a controlled substance. I an unattended car which I decided to chop so I drove to the chopshop and started chopping. I forgot to turn my phone off and happened to have 6 LSD on me because of a video I recorded beforehand this was of course my own fault that I did all these bad things an am not blaming anyone for my unthoughtfulness but I received 2 hours of jail time.

I used to be a in the PD and arrested people all the time for the crimes they commited but you only realise how long people actually sit in jail after you experience it yourself. Not to compare Eclipse to NoPixel in a bad light or anything but I've just seen Jean Paul (xqc) in a vod get arrested for throwing grenades at Mission Row where there was a couple cruisers parked outside, out of a helicopter and received 15 minutes in prison. Personally I think this is a bit too short in prison for that crime but in comparison to Eclipse where I did far less and had to spend 2 hours of IRL time just sat there is a bit excessive.

I just feel that if these sentences were reduced it would cause much higher quality RP as criminals wouldn't feel so OOCly nervous to commit crimes ICly but also be more creative which would of course create a much better experience for everyone overall such as this video about a jewlery heist. I also think this would make cops less strict and being a cop more fun as you would have more opportunities to create bonds between eachother rather it just be strictly cops vs crims where you unintentionally develop an OOC disliking for the opposing faction over time. Despite the cops doing their duties of enforcing the law and the crims doing crime to make money and keep the cops occupied.

Finally, I think this would greatly decrease the "play to win" mentality which a lot of players have, if not most and to be honest, it's hard not to have when from the cops perspective theres nothing happening for so long and the city being so stale for hours on end until they hear the bank alarm go off to which half the PD responds to only to be sent away because the higher ranking officers are told to deal with it as they specialise in that field - on the other hand from the crims perspective using the same example: the bank robbery, a crim can be given a 20k fine along side a 3 hour sentence if caught and this is without a hostage, theme or anything that would cause actual quality roleplay to happen - purely for the money. This is literally just "Possesion of Illegal Firearms/Weapons", "Bank Robbery" and "Felony Evading" which is most cases is the standard when you attempt to do a bank, try to evade but get caught for whatever reason.

This is my view on how this very small change can have an extremely big and positive impact on everyones RP experience.

[Ash]

Sentences were actually capped in a recent update: 

 

Also comparing to xqc is not a good comparison as their focus is on entertaining thousands of people watching streams more than it is about individual enjoyment and I'm just gonna say it, more about showmanship than actual roleplay most of the time. Their prison/jail will only really have 1 or 2 people in at any given time compared to ours (obviously there's quieter times our end still though).

Obviously I come from a very biased standpoint as an advocate for people doing more prison RP since I run the DOC faction but I personally wish people would utilise the prison as a way for more character development and growth instead of just "aw shucks I need to kill 2 hours". We've felt the cap a little in activity from the prison cellblock but I think the cap overall is good for the community but I don't think times need reducing more.

I would also argue to some extent that reducing it more would increase the play to win mentality as it's effectively minimising the time between your "hits" and having a higher turnaround if win/loss scenarios. To quote the post linked above:

Quote

"Previously, a long time ago, we had a prison cap of 120 minutes. The problem with the 120 minutes prison cap is that this encouraged players who already had committed a long list of crimes, to go "all-out" as it wouldn't increase their time neither affect them financially that much."

 

Also your example of bank robbery + illegal weapon + felony evading for 3 hours, I think that's perfectly reasonable. Bank robbery is the highest level of crime you can do effectively barring mass murdering cops on top of it and I guess having lingering charges from another crime. 

All in all, the recent changes are enough of a change to have a positive effect in my opinion and there doesn't need to be even less time, instead I advocate people putting more effort into prison roleplay and not relying on script for all activities and be a little creative. 

[IAmTurtle]

If you do the crime you should do the time.

 

If you are scared to do get caught you should not do the crime. 

[Bala]

Not really sure that "If you do the crime you should do the time." works when you are reliant on your criminals for action for the cops. 
I don't personally have any issue with the crimes or the times, I think they are absolutely fine.

BUT

For me, it's the prison itself that needs to change. Being in prison shouldn't feel like an OOC punishment or an excuse to tab out and open netflix but the reality is, there is nothing really in there for people to do besides that. Half the people DMing in there are again doing it because they are bored.

It's not a good situation for the crims and it's not a good situation for DOC either. I made some recommendations a while back regarding the prison which I think got implemented but it's clearly not a problem that will be fixed without significant development.

If it was me, I'd increase the misdemeanour times that are under say 10-15 minutes to 20 and stop using the jail cells at Mission Row / Paleto. Prisoners aren't going to be interacted with in those locations, they don't have anything to do but idle in their cell, might as well get them into an environment where they can interact with other players and move around.

From the development side;

• Adding a couple little freelance activities to the prison would help and tweaking the amount that they pay out. Whether that's like cooking or laundry or whatever.
  The current mining activity is a bit of a poor copy-paste of the regular mining job.
• Adding in a prison inventory for the player, to place anywhere inside the prison where RPly there would be a spot to hide it.
  As long as a prisoner was in prison, anyone could interact with the prison inventory for that person if they were in the right place.
• Being able to fashion weapons using certain items would be good, but a long term thing for the prisoner, they'd have to make a shank over time and out of view of guards and such. Think of it a little bit like reversing drinking a water bottle. The more times you use the piece of metal, the more you make it into a shank. Once the shank is complete, you have a knife.
• Fix the poker table.
• Adding different colour uniforms for the prisoners based on their category.
   

[Mooks]

4 minutes ago, Bala said:

Not really sure that "If you do the crime you should do the time." works when you are reliant on your criminals for action for the cops. 
I don't personally have any issue with the crimes or the times, I think they are absolutely fine.

BUT

For me, it's the prison itself that needs to change. Being in prison shouldn't feel like an OOC punishment or an excuse to tab out and open netflix but the reality is, there is nothing really in there for people to do besides that. Half the people DMing in there are again doing it because they are bored.

It's not a good situation for the crims and it's not a good situation for DOC either. I made some recommendations a while back regarding the prison which I think got implemented but it's clearly not a problem that will be fixed without significant development.

If it was me, I'd increase the misdemeanour times that are under say 10-15 minutes to 20 and stop using the jail cells at Mission Row / Paleto. Prisoners aren't going to be interacted with in those locations, they don't have anything to do but idle in their cell, might as well get them into an environment where they can interact with other players and move around.

From the development side;

• Adding a couple little freelance activities to the prison would help and tweaking the amount that they pay out. Whether that's like cooking or laundry or whatever.
  The current mining activity is a bit of a poor copy-paste of the regular mining job.
• Adding in a prison inventory for the player, to place anywhere inside the prison where RPly there would be a spot to hide it.
  As long as a prisoner was in prison, anyone could interact with the prison inventory for that person if they were in the right place.
• Being able to fashion weapons using certain items would be good, but a long term thing for the prisoner, they'd have to make a shank over time and out of view of guards and such. Think of it a little bit like reversing drinking a water bottle. The more times you use the piece of metal, the more you make it into a shank. Once the shank is complete, you have a knife.
• Fix the poker table.
• Adding different colour uniforms for the prisoners based on their category.
   

Couldn't have worded it better myself. Especially "Being in prison shouldn't feel like an OOC punishment or an excuse to tab out and open netflix but the reality is, there is nothing really in there for people to do besides that".

[Cmoney]

i totally agree with more activities and or rp op in the prisons.

- More freelance jobs then ore  , example. Cooking , Laundry , Cleaning etc. 

A trustee program to use these jobs  ?  ( and with each Job u can get some contraband but would be to that job such as chems , shanks, phones, radios , pickaxes or other etc.

- More crim activity which would increase the fun and enjoyment of both prisoner and Guard (which i feel can get sooo boring watching u guys watch us without doing anything). examples :

Making Shanks like said before

making Boof (toliet Alcohol) ,

another way to get stamps other than poker.

bribing guards for contraband like a phone or radio even shanks sometimes or a way to sneak them in via Visits (which is IRL thing)

making the Prison escape alot easier then having to call in a admin to check? maybe a way u can put all those contrabands together to escape prison , it would take a while but it would be good for those doing 2-4 hours.

Fighting yard ? or spot where u don't die making your life stronger so a fight can last more than 3 punches haha the fight is controlled since the DM is SOO REAL in prison, ive never heard of a prison where people don't fight for stamps,  pickaxe or any reason really, of course there can be punishment for the act but DM fighting in Prison should be very loose,  u can escalate things via words, pushing , threats and such. why not duke it out for the resp and Rep of that person. 

and i can go on and on haha, but for real i really think this would increase Guard activity and make it a place to apply for, and it would make a good time oocly and icly to try and orchestrate something of the sort for the crims and guards alike trying to catch them in such acts. 

 

THESE ARE MY OPNIONS AND NO ONE ELSES

[Destuin]

We just need more scripted jobs, that completing significantly reduces your time spent in DOC. Is there anyone out there that thinks the current exchange of stamps to time off is good?

[AtlasOLimbo]

Improvements to DOC have been discussed many of time and the typical response is "you don't need scripts to roleplay" which can be true, but in this case, more than any I think DOC needs script support to thrive. Basic things in Prison feel like OOC punishments as well, like the sell price of ores drastically decreasing as you mine when there's already limited and timed spawns of ores as is. It's silly and needs to change.

[JazzyJaz]

On 1/7/2022 at 5:22 AM, Destuin said:

We just need more scripted jobs, that completing significantly reduces your time spent in DOC. Is there anyone out there that thinks the current exchange of stamps to time off is good?

this is true but u is right though u spend an hour doing ore and get 2 min off the sentence lol makes no sense.

Edited January 8, 2022 by JazzyJaz

[skeletee]

Hey! I thought it would be good to clarify a few things on the Jewellery Heist because it was mentioned in the original post. This was an alternative RP request, which means I wrote up a document requesting several things to be approved by SA that would help facilitate the RP opp. Concerning jail times/fines, we asked that the jail fines would be paid because if you successfully rob a jewellery store, you would have enough money to pay back the fines. The charges placed and hours spent in prison did not change. If you’re part of a faction, I definitely recommend speaking to your faction leaders about your ideas and other creative planning if you’d like to do the same because it’s not impossible! 

[Phantas]

55 minutes ago, Lola said:

Hey! I thought it would be good to clarify a few things on the Jewellery Heist because it was mentioned in the original post. This was an alternative RP request, which means I wrote up a document requesting several things to be approved by SA that would help facilitate the RP opp. Concerning jail times/fines, we asked that the jail fines would be paid because if you successfully rob a jewellery store, you would have enough money to pay back the fines. The charges placed and hours spent in prison did not change. If you’re part of a faction, I definitely recommend speaking to your faction leaders about your ideas and other creative planning if you’d like to do the same because it’s not impossible! 

Very cool Lola will definitely pass that along!

[Eloah]

21 hours ago, Kieran Horn said:

Punishing criminals with blatant OOC punishments (financial) when you rely on them to have a job? 

Not the best of plans. 

Mate, what ? Fines are not OOC they are just meant to control your assets after you commit crimes! any one can rob banks these days but the real issue is can you get away with it or not ? and now just imagine you robbed a bank and got arrested with no fines, then you'd get out and try to do it again and again. 
I have been to jail a lot of times and most of the times for a long time 6+ and believe me i really hate it but i feel like if the fines and jail time are reduced by any scale it's gonna ruin the server totally , like it or not the jail time and fines are so balanced on my opinion however the behavior that cops represent while dealing with criminals is a little bit harsh and needs a bit of training to promote a better experience for both sides, they don't act like real police force should be acting and i highly agree on that but the rest is just balanced.
I also highly recommend some creative changes in DOC , changes that would make DOC enjoyable for both crims and DOC guards, i personally see 0 opportunities to role play except the part who run around and punch you randomly just to have fun, i personally watch netflix or do some other work while i'm caught in jail, but this shouldn't be the way it works. a suggestion that i ahve for DOC is to put available ATMs there so that people would be able to play poker with their actual money.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Eloah

[Phantas]

On 1/9/2022 at 3:27 AM, Kieran Horn said:

Punishing criminals with blatant OOC punishments (financial) when you rely on them to have a job? 

Not the best of plans. 

might need staff to investigate this guy if he believes ic money fees are an ooc punishment and he relies on them for a job.

 

[RyacDex]

I had a friend today leave due to his debt from one crime - easily $30-$40k worth of debt. Just makes it not fun, let alone the limited RP ops in prison - which mean you can be in there for atleast  2-4 hours at a time.

[IAmTurtle]

2 hours ago, RyacDex said:

I had a friend today leave due to his debt from one crime - easily $30-$40k worth of debt. Just makes it not fun, let alone the limited RP ops in prison - which mean you can be in there for atleast  2-4 hours at a time.

Dont evade and shoot at cops every day and you wont be in debt. Also you can make a new char or do some many things icly to get out  of debt pretty fast. 

[Frezas]

12 hours ago, RyacDex said:

I had a friend today leave due to his debt from one crime - easily $30-$40k worth of debt. Just makes it not fun, let alone the limited RP ops in prison - which mean you can be in there for atleast  2-4 hours at a time.

One crime does not give such a debt. As senior support said, don't evade and shoot at cops every day, people in this server are used to just shoot and evade, go 200 around the streets collecting tickets and reckless operations. Then proceed to cry on forums about being broke in game. On government website I have found that murder charge gives you the highest fine of 14.000, it is not even near 30-40k you mentioned, so I guess his charges consisted of going around and shooting, evading, going on the streets 200 and collecting those fines. It does not work like that, prison might be another case, never understood why it is, so limiting knowing that people have to literally sit behind bars IRL and IG for 4 hours. Like getting pulled over while drunk IRL and getting detained eats the same amount of time. 

 

Responding to original post, I would say that making sentences shorter will make this server go insane. This is not one of those servers where people follow traffic, drive cars which are not (elegy, comet and BF400), and not having real RP like Grove Street Block gangs going to Paleto or Vinewood to rob ?? WTF?? Where is the RP and how a gang can rob a bank if it's not a mob or organized crime family??? This would make the server even harder to play for PD, as we already get shot at more and more and people evade us 25 times a day. So, every 30 minutes people would go out of jail, rob a store, evade, then repeat. I do not believe making sentences shorter would help. It would help to make prison more interactive, like poker which was mentioned (because obviously criminals IRL smuggle things inside) and, making something like plates, cleaning etc. (which would give small salary when going out of prison). 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Frezas

[Destuin]

6 minutes ago, Frezas said:

One crime does not give such a debt. As senior support said, don't evade and shoot at cops every day, people in this server are used to just shoot and evade, go 200 around the streets collecting tickets and reckless operations. Then proceed to cry on forums about being broke in game. On government website I have found that murder charge gives you the highest fine of 14.000, it is not even near 30-40k you mentioned, so I guess his charges consisted of going around and shooting, evading, going on the streets 200 and collecting those fines. It does not work like that, prison might be another case, never understood why it is, so limiting knowing that people have to literally sit behind bars IRL and IG for 4 hours. Like getting pulled over while drunk IRL and getting detained eats the same amount of time. 

Well the fines get stacked because the cops love to add charges and there is no IC consequences when they do this, even though it shows on every arrest report xD. You normally get sentenced for the most severe aspect of your crime for example murder. You wouldn't get assault, murder, face concealment etc etc. So although that might be the highest fine you can get for one instance. Lets say a new player tries stealing a car, gets caught and attempts to run away from police (which would be a perfectly reasonable response for a new player, on a GTA server). He would likely face 5-7 charges by the time they have finished adding them altogether. Again this isn't an issue that PD really care about solving so it has just become the status quo.  

[Frezas]

6 minutes ago, Destuin said:

Well the fines get stacked because the cops love to add charges and there is no IC consequences when they do this, even though it shows on every arrest report xD. You normally get sentenced for the most severe aspect of your crime for example murder. You wouldn't get assault, murder, face concealment etc etc. So although that might be the highest fine you can get for one instance. Lets say a new player tries stealing a car, gets caught and attempts to run away from police (which would be a perfectly reasonable response for a new player, on a GTA server). He would likely face 5-7 charges by the time they have finished adding them altogether. Again this isn't an issue that PD really care about solving so it has just become the status quo.  

This is not true as I am in PD, and I am not the highest ranking officer to be honest, but 90 out of 100 POI - POIII, never charge more than it's necessary, personally me and a few other cops (as I am playing mornings) never put more than felony evading if you evade us, today we had a guy with outstanding warrant of felony evasion, he evaded again, we did not put any more charges. Most of the officer do not overcharge as we understand that it takes time to sit there in DOC for criminals.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Frezas

[Destuin]

1 minute ago, Frezas said:

This is not true as I am in PD, and I am not the highest ranking officer to be honest, but 90 out of 100 POI - POIII, never charge more than it's necessary, personally me and a few other cops (as I am playing mornings) never put more that felony evading, today we had a guy with outstanding warrant of felony evasion, he evaded again, we did not put any more charges. Most of the officer do not overcharge as we understand that it takes time to sit there in DOC for criminals.

Ye I understand you might not have experienced it but as a crim and DOC worker myself, trust me when I say this is a regular occurrence. You defo seem like one of the better guys as these officers have nothing to gain by increasing your prison time/fines its just a bad mentality. I guess this is not super relevant to the topic, but it does incorporate fines in a way. It would be nice to see criminals only being charged, for there one main serious offence. Courts do not really say, that the defendant is guilty for example of murder, assault, breaking and entering etc. They will just issue the punishment based off of the murder charge. 

[AtlasOLimbo]

Just for reference. PD's written policy is to charge for every crime you witness and failure to do so can result in OOC punishment.

[Destuin]

1 minute ago, AtlasOLimbo said:

Just for reference. PD's written policy is to charge for every crime you witness and failure to do so can result in OOC punishment.

This is great to hear! Maybe something like this could be looked into being changed by the staff/higher ups. As this would not only solve the problem of fines/punishments but would also not restrict any PD rp etc. It is not like changing the penal code or making crimes come with less punishments. Seems like that would be a win win for everyone :).

[AtlasOLimbo]

2 minutes ago, Destuin said:

This is great to hear! Maybe something like this could be looked into being changed by the staff/higher ups. As this would not only solve the problem of fines/punishments but would also not restrict any PD rp etc. It is not like changing the penal code or making crimes come with less punishments. Seems like that would be a win win for everyone :).

I'd hope PD could implement some sort of leniency system for good RP and such like SD has in their policy. I tried to be lenient on my charges when I was PD but would often get overruled by others and supervisors for this very reason. It's definitely something PD HICOM should look into.

Edited January 17, 2022 by AtlasOLimbo
oops mistype

[Frezas]

3 hours ago, AtlasOLimbo said:

Just for reference. PD's written policy is to charge for every crime you witness and failure to do so can result in OOC punishment.

True, but what I am saying that most of the officers (including me) charge for base things, and when thinking deep you can charge with any charge you want and walk unpunished as officer. We are judge, jury and officers at the same time when charging.

[TheCactus]

I believe that now, after fines and time has been reduced and modified, I don't see how people can complain that things are not balanced.
I have a civilian character, a criminal one and a law enforcement one. It is true that I spent over 2000 hours on the law enforcement character so my way of seeing things is different from most players but when I first joined the server my character was a gang member and I did not abandon the thrill of criminal roleplay. Those who are my character's colleagues do not know who I am so it would make sense to get the same exact treatment most people do.

Back to the main topic. Most criminal on this server choose the "make more noise and make more money" approach, accepting the risk of losing assets, money and freedom in exchange of more money per time. That comes with a price. You do it well and you earn a lot of money. Not all players choose that approach. Others prefer mixing with the crowd and being seen as civilians when they have to deal with police at the cost of making less money. This is why things are balanced.
If time and fines were to be reduced, avoiding police would be pointless and comitting the crime would be worth getting caught. It would basically reduce the variety of roleplay the criminal side provides.

On 1/17/2022 at 11:22 AM, Kieran Horn said:

This is the argument I am trying to address. You say don't commit crimes....okay, we all atop. How fun is the server now? PD, SD and DOC rely on criminals to be able to function appropriately. If you want people to stop being criminals, it is almost like you don't want half the people on the server to play. 

As soon as the new public robbery rules have been implemented, robberies have been reduced drastically. The server was actually more enjoyable because we could finally focus on adding detail to our roleplay when investigating 911 calls and roleplaying with the community, including criminal roleplayers. Situtations and scenarios were not rushed as they are now. Cop RP isn't pursuit and shoot. Cop RP is towing cars, talking to the public, issue citations, investigate 911 calls, look for stolen vehicles, perform traffic stops, help injured people, deal with complaints, set up sting operations, question suspects, gather evidence, file reports and paperwork, meet new people, etc. Shooting, arresting and pursuits are part of what we do, not all we do.
Most of us enjoy every single part of our roleplay so if you stop committing your daily crimes, I still have fun. There's still things to do if you stop evading and shooting.

Nobody said stop committing crimes, but you can stop getting caught. Maybe you get caught because you don't try new avenues to elude law enforcement, and by new avenues I mean new methods, not streets. If you got to the point where you have to evade, maybe you should not have got caught slacking?
Triads started evading with boats because a fast boat is only 100k. Royals have members that used to set up leveled motorcyles and they are now doing it again. There's spikestrips that can be stolen and used, trucks that can devastate a pursuit line and are effective when paired with another person on a motorcycle. Not everything has escalate and end with guns being used because if you do it and get caught, then you complain about the fines and time.

 

If you choose setting up another sports car or fast bike instead of being inventive, then you set yourself up for a longer and identical chase.
Many smart and old methods of eluding law enforcement have been abandoned while the community keeps doing the same things over and over then don't even question themselves when the plan doesn't work anymore, thinking it's not their fault.
If you believe that what I mentioned would be a waste of time and resources, then you should accept the fines and the sentence, knowing that you lacked creativity and the effort was not worth the escape.

[Destuin]

I mean almost every argument you made above could be said towards PD officers and is in fact even easier as you have more numbers. Instead of getting newer, faster vehicles, you could use the resources available, of which you have many more. Instead you just get new vehicles added? If you ask nearly any crim they will tell you that the new cap and fine system is nearly worthless. I guess its nice now that people don't spend 20 hours in jail, so ye we have it to easy!