"Mutants in Mega-City One"
In "Mutants in Mega-City One" (2007), Judge Dredd concludes that the anti-mutant laws are unjust and should be repealed, having given serious thought to the issue for the first time in his life as a result of meeting his mutant relatives. He persuades Chief Judge Hershey to put his motion to a vote before Mega-City One's ruling body, the Council of Five. While the vote is pending, however, Dredd is still obliged to enforce the very laws he seeks to repeal. When a normal couple discover that their newborn baby is a mutant, they abscond rather than face the Mutant Catchers, who will force them into exile in the Cursed Earth desert. They find refuge with other mutants in a safehouse run by sympathisers, where they hope to live in secret. However Dredd is searching for them, as absconding with a mutant child carries a mandatory sentence of three years.
In the course of his investigation, Dredd (and through Dredd, the reader) learns from another citizen about some of the terrible consequences of the city's prejudice against mutants. When the citizen's family was discovered to have been hiding his mutant younger brother for twelve years, the whole family was incarcerated for their crime, while the child was deported from the city to a mutant internment camp in the Cursed Earth. Unable to cope, the child died, and his body was fed to the pigs, mutants not being considered worthy of a decent burial. This is the first mention in Judge Dredd of mutant camps for city-born mutants, which would later be stated to be compulsory until the mutant became 16 – after that, they supposedly free to leave if they chose.
Dredd eventually discovers the safehouse where the couple he seeks is hiding, and arrests everyone present. The normal citizens are imprisoned, and all of the mutants are deported to a mutant camp in the Cursed Earth.
Meanwhile the Council of Five unanimously votes against reforming the law. As a result, when Randy Fargo and some of Dredd's other mutant relations arrive at the city gate to visit him, Dredd is compelled to deny them entry to the city, and they are forced to turn back.
"Mutants in Mega-City One" was immediately followed by "The Facility" and "The Secret of Mutant Camp 5," in which Dredd tours Mega-City One's mutant camps in the Cursed Earth, and discovers that standards of care in the camps have sunk to a shockingly low level. His investigations uncover criminal neglect and appalling abuses, including starvation, torture and outright murder. Alarmed by Dredd's discoveries, Chief Judge Hershey becomes slightly more sympathetic to Dredd's new views, and orders an improvement in standards at the camps. Nevertheless, no change of general policy is forthcoming.
The above stories contained obvious references to Guantanamo Bay detention camp and to the Nazi extermination camps. (They were also the first stories after the end of the "America" trilogy to feature Cadet America Beeny.)
In "The Spirit of Christmas," Dredd again confronts the Chief Judge and demands a second vote on repealing the mutant laws, threatening to resign if she does not support him. As Dredd is the city's most famous and feared judge, Hershey bows to this threat and agrees to schedule another vote, hoping that enough senior judges can be persuaded to change their minds.
Although "Emphatically Evil" (2008) was primarily a story about serial killer PJ Maybe (and Beeny's first case following her promotion to full judge), the mutants story continued as a subplot. Public opinion is radically against Dredd's proposed reforms, with polls showing that 96 percent of the city opposes relaxing strict controls on mutants. While anti-reform protests erupt into riots on the streets, the Council convenes to debate Dredd's motion. Although Dredd is absent from the meeting, not being a member of the Council, he has earlier met with the members to try to change their minds, saying "I believe in justice, and an injustice has to be righted, no matter how inconvenient." However it is not Dredd's logic but his threat to resign which ultimately carries the vote in his favour.
Following the vote, the story "...Regrets" depicts Randy Fargo's return to Mega-City One with his family, this time invited by the Judges as guests of honour. As relatives of Chief Judge Fargo (the founder of the Judge System and Dredd's clone father), their tour of the city attracts much media attention, and controversy. Although the Mayor of Mega-City One gives them all honorary citizenship, feelings are still running high amongst the population, and talk shows are full of heated debate about the merits of Dredd's law. Public opinion becomes slightly more favourable after Jubal Fargo gives his life to rescue a four-year-old child from kidnappers, and the Fargos return to their home in the Cursed Earth. However mutants' rights still continue to arouse strong passions.
"Mutie Block" reveals that mutants are being admitted to the city following strict selection processes, and being given segregated accommodation in Norma Jean Baker Block. Anti-mutant protests are still continuing, and mutants are targeted for violent hate crimes, the murder rate for mutants being 3,600 percent above average. Official government policy is to actively discourage mutants from entering the city by giving them demotivational speeches on their arrival and offering cash bribes in exchange for relinquishing their claims to citizenship.
In "Backlash" (2009) senior, hardline judges begin a campaign to elect a new chief judge who will repeal the new pro-mutant laws. Their chosen candidate, Judge Dan Francisco, survives an assassination attempt by mutants. In spite of Dredd's discovery that the assassination was secretly orchestrated by anti-mutant activists in order to increase support for their cause, Francisco still defeats Hershey by a landslide.
"Under New Management" shows Francisco's first day in office as the new chief judge. He replaces the entire Council of Five, prohibits mutant immigration, and institutes a policy of exiling the mutants already in the city to new townships in the Cursed Earth, unless they agree to compulsory sterilisation. The new deputy chief judge, Judge Sinfield, assigns Dredd to oversee the operation, with Beeny as his assistant. This story acts as a prologue to "Tour of Duty," which started in the next issue.
Read more about this topic: Mutants (Judge Dredd Storyline)