The Criminal Law System of the Wilds
IT was our usual rest time after lunch when I chose to promptly ask Techi about law enforcement in the Beastly Wilds. Apparently, the police and the criminal law system here was mostly the same as the one I was familiar with. They had district courts, District Public Prosecutors Offices, police stations, and prisons. They even had proper warrants issued by the court.
If I had to point out the only thing that was different, it would probably be the fact that it was almost impossible to make an appeal to higher courts. Technically, the rules allowed it, but making an appeal to higher courts meant that you had to physically go to the High Court and the Supreme Court—going to the other side of the border. According to Techi, it was almost unthinkable to receive permission to leave for such a purpose. Therefore, making appeals to higher courts was impossible in practice.
Since you couldn’t appeal to higher courts, the judgment at the first trial was final. It placed a lot of pressure on the police officers, the public prosecutors, and the judges. In the Wilds, these were jobs you couldn’t enter without a strong resolve. The necessary resolve and knowledge were passed down within families, which was why most occupations to do with the criminal law system were hereditary.
But of course, there were glaring flaws with such a system, and everyone knew that well. Due to that, they strived and devoted every effort into nipping all possible problems in the bud, as well as skirting around those flaws in ways they could. Despite being a District Court, they had an impressive assembly of judges from every single clan within the Wilds. The same could be said for the police and the prosecution, which consisted of representatives who staked their clan’s pride and honor on their duty.
It certainly sounded like they had their work cut out for them—it was much more rigorous than I’d expected.
Despite the problems, they’d still managed to maintain public peace without any issue so far, and they possibly owed that partly to the unique environment of the Beastly Wilds. Their population was small, and it was an autonomous region. They even had the special Fusang trees that germinated with good deeds. All these factors intertwined intricately to form the current Beastly Wilds I lived in.
Furthermore, in the Beastly Wilds, committing crimes was a much more grave and severe matter than on the other side of the border. Scratch much more, it was practically on a whole other level. Because of that, most beastfolk gave crime a wide berth and led law-abiding lives, so the jail was almost empty. In fact, you could even round down the number of prisoners to zero.
Techi’s wording of “almost empty” made me extremely curious, but since she deliberately glossed over it, there must be circumstances that she couldn’t tell me. I didn’t want to poke into a hornet’s nest, so I chose to swallow my questions.
Techi shrugged and concluded, “In any case, no matter what the criminal law system is like, as long as you live virtuously, you don’t really have to care about it. We barely have any incidents here, so the police and the court mostly deal with accidents and civil cases. Apparently, the prosecutors are especially idle on their job.
“When it’s so slow that they’ve seriously got nothing to do at all, I hear they’d reenact incidents on police TV dramas and play a game of make-believe, acting out what they’d do as a prosecutor if they came across such a case. They claim that it’s simulation exercises or something, but well… Looks like having nothing to do on your job isn’t always a good thing.”
Having finished giving me a brief rundown of the system in the Wilds, Techi sipped on the strawberry soda I’d prepared for her with her straw. After refreshing her parched mouth, she cleared her throat and asked, “Any questions?”
I gave it some thought. “Ah. Just wondering, what was the last time you had a criminal case in the Beastly Wilds? What kind of incident was it? Since the prison is almost empty, it means that you haven’t had a big case in a long time—or rather, cases that ended with prison sentences with no stay of execution, right?”
Still holding her straw in her mouth, Techi looked up at the ceiling and hummed thoughtfully, seemingly struggling with finding the details in her mind. “How long ago was it again…? I think… I think it should be around May last year. There was a big commotion about a shoplifter back then, and that was probably the most recent case to my knowledge. Remember that supermarket you visit often? There was a moron who shoplifted there, and it caused quite a stir. I remember that.”
I blinked in surprise. “Um, I wasn’t really talking about shoplifting, but something a bit more severe…” It was then that the meaning of her words sank in. “Wait, what? A shoplifter caused a big stir?”
“Yeah, it was intense.” She nodded. “It started with the police officers of each clan mobilizing at once, and nearly a hundred officers went around to investigate and question the perpetrator and witnesses. I think it probably took roughly half a year until the public prosecutors came to the decision to drop the criminal charges against the suspect. Meanwhile, the court was preparing for the trial, so they were livid that the prosecutor dropped the charges.
“The reason for the prosecutors’ decision is that the damage was only a cheap candy priced at ¥20, and the moron who shoplifted on impulse felt deep remorse about it. Everyone was also exhausted after tireless investigations every day, so they figured it wasn’t worth it. The investigation and questioning in the Wilds are all recorded to prevent a bunch of problems, and a lawyer was present at every single questioning. But the work was so harsh that even the lawyer started saying that they wanted to resign midway.”
Techi shrugged. “And well, everyone finally regained their senses and realized that even if this was the first case in a while for the law enforcement, they were taking things too far, so all those involved got a big scolding. There was talk about measures to prevent it from happening again, so I think the system should have been improved somewhat now. Probably.”
I was dumbfounded by what I’d just heard. “Wh-Whoa… It escalated to that point? But, uh… Just wondering, were there really no incidents other than shoplifting? For example, was there never anyone who got into a brawl because they were drunk?”
“I mean, of course there are fights and brawls, that’s just a part of life. But we all know how hectic it can get if it becomes a criminal case, so everyone stops when it gets to a certain point. No matter what kind of maddening things happen, we try to avoid turning it into an incident. ‘If I punch this person right now, it’s going to become a giant problem. I’ll suffer and waste roughly half a year doing nothing.’ When you think that, you can’t really fight because of a silly reason, can you?”
She continued, “Even if you failed to restrain yourself and it ends up getting physical, most of the time, you resolve the issue in private. The representative of their clans—you can think of them as our chiefs—and the president of the community association will assemble to negotiate and try to settle things as peacefully as possible. The shoplifting incident only got to that point because the perpetrator didn’t feel any regret at first. In fact, when the supermarket manager caught them red-handed, they hurled abusive language and taunts at the manager, who called the police in the heat of the moment.”
“H-Huuuh…” That was the only thing I could say. “That sounds like quite a distressing incident.”
“Yeah, it sure was. So Mikura, be careful…” She looked at me solemnly. “Even if you don’t get arrested, just attracting the attention of the police means a whole load of trouble, such as getting stopped for questioning. In some cases, they might come all the way to your house over and over for days on end, trying to fish out every single detail about your life.”
“Yikes…” I grimaced. “I’ll be careful so that such a thing doesn’t happen.”
Kon, who’d been quietly sipping on his new cup of strawberry soda, raised his voice cheerfully. “Me too, me too! I will also take care not to do anything bad!”
Techi and I both smiled at the precious boy. We then traded glances and communicated with each other silently through eye contact.
We both knew why I’d asked her about the criminal law system in the Wilds to begin with—Techi’s uncle, who seemed to be up to no good. Those three men had attempted to do something on that path, and the malicious looks in their eyes meant that their intentions hadn’t been harmless. Getting involved with those three thoughtlessly meant that we’d end up in the same position as them—we’d become the subjects of investigations and questioning, going down the exact same path as the stressful shoplifting incident. Both of us wanted to avoid that at all costs.
That was why we weren’t going to tackle them directly, keeping them at arm’s length while leading a peaceful, respectful, and law-abiding life. I could tell from her eyes that the sentiment was mutual. The two of us kept our guards up, determined not to let such a disaster unfold.