Brit-Cit - Law and Justice Department

Law and Justice Department

The Brit-Cit Justice Department is based in the New Old Bailey. It is very similar in structure and effect to the Mega City One justice system, and aside from a few cosmetic differences (lions instead of eagles) even the Judge uniforms are the same. As such, the laws are harsh, with many crimes not found in present-day law, and the Judges have the power to act as both police and judge/jury/executioner, though they do portray more of a stiff upper lip when doing so.

The laws are more lenient in some areas though - Detective-Judges and Murphyville Judges are allowed to marry, several currently banned substances are legal, and the Dredd story The Satanist featured a perfectly legal Orgy Club in the outskirts of Brit-Cit.

Prospective Judges spend ten years at Hendon Academy, followed by twelve months on probation with a Judge.

Due to the circumstance of the post-War Justice Department, judicial corruption in Brit-Cit has historically been a major problem. The Department has suffered from more racism and sexism than its counterpart in Mega-City One, and Masonic influences in the Senior levels. Senior Judges can buy their commissions in the same way as Victorian military officers. Most are incompetent or directly controlled by the crime lords and it is left to Street and Detective Judges to get the work done. The ruling body, the Order of the Star Chamber, were known for high institutional corruption, and were drawn from the ranks of pre-war politics, from business, and minor royalty rather than from the Judge ranks. (At other times, a different ruling body has been shown: see "Depiction")

However, institutional corruption has gone down over time. This is partly due to the deaths of many Senior Judges, Overlords, and the entire Star Chamber, and partly due to the rise of newer Judges who just see the crime lords as criminals. The demise of the Star Chamber was seen as a "bright new dawn for Brit-Cit", though nobody had worked out what this meant. Part of this has included the loss of many of the more incompetent Senior Judges, as well as a mass of procedural nightmares as there's no longer a top hierarchy and no obvious replacement for them. The Grand Order of the Privy Chamber - the future version of the Privy Council - ended up taking control by default, despite their previous unimportance and their reactionary social agenda, as there was no one else left.

Specialised branches of the Justice Department include Dispatch, which handles communications, deploys Judges, and co-ordinates operations (equivalent of MC-1's Control); Riot Control; Psi Division, later named Psyk-Division; an Endangered Species Squad that captures & cares for supernatural life-forms; Med-Division; Shok-TAC, a heavily armoured armed response team, and Tactical Arms, a militarily uniformed group; the Special Judicial Service, a commando unit roughly equivalent to the modern day SAS; Special Branch; Internal Affairs, the equivalent of the Special Judicial Squad; the Endangered Species Squad, who capture fantastical creatures and attempt to breed them in order to rejuvenate the collapsing 22nd century ecosystem; and CID, the investigative branch. Overseeing this are Administrators, who wear formal suits rather than a Judicial uniform, and lack judicial powers.

CID is not popular with the "uniform plods" but gained an unspecified autonomy following the end of the Star Chamber, which ended with the rise of the Privy Council.