Another thing that really bothered Darren and Amber was how the government treated disabled people. Criminals could get help, disabled people could not.
When the SIN Record became the golden standard in the 2130’s, prisons had already been outmoded for two decades. There was no need. Labor communes always needed more and more subjects. The only challenge was indoctrinating a hardened criminal used to selfish indulgence to a communal way of life. It was one thing to raise a child from birth to fully accept the labor commune as a worthy environment. But anyone who had had unbridled freedom didn’t cave so predictably.
That’s where “4M” technology came into play. The Marshall Mind Manipulating Mode (4M) devices, named after an early pioneer of this technology, Everett Marshall, had been advancing for half a century. 4M technology was at the point where predictable behavior modifications could be made. “Rehabilitation” was the latest rage. And that was how criminals conformed to the State Labor Communes without incident.
The 4M treatments didn’t hurt either. Not at all. In fact, they were as good as many a sought after drug. 4M treatments had already been used for decades in place of traditional drug therapies.
With 4M treatments now commonplace among the general public, whether free or slave, both crimes and suicides had decreased dramatically. These treatments were given lots of publicity because they really worked. It was widely known that if things got too bad, too out of control, too crazy, then there was real treatment available.
The problem was, 4M treatments were seldom available or affordable to the C and D classes for medical uses. More drastic measures were required from the lower classes to get help for health issues.
One such desperate measure was the Volunteer for Labor program. This was yet another State initiative to get more people into the labor communes as permanent slaves. The main drawback with this program was that the State did not officially accept disabled people into the labor communes. Their sometimes vague definition of disabled was really just a built-in means to allow them to reject anyone from the program.
Why the State felt it important to have this “out” didn’t really make sense because the government could pretty much do what it wanted anyway. But the real result of not accepting handicapped people was the basic undoing of the Volunteer for Labor program.
After all, who in their right mind would volunteer to give up their freedom for a life sentence in the labor communes, unless they were really down and out? Yet those who were really down and out were also usually not in their right mind. So they were labeled “Mentally Disabled” and typically rejected from Volunteer for Labor anyway.
This caused a big problem for all those down and out people who had nothing left to live for, who were willing to trade their freedoms for State housing, meals, work, and free 4M treatments that would probably make them well. There was usually but once choice left.
Unofficially known in free society by the C and D classes as the “Crime Pays” program, it was a common joke that if you just committed a serious enough crime, you’d be taken care of the rest of your life. It was the loophole to get around the Volunteer for Labor disability rejection issue.
Criminals had to be dealt with by the State regardless of whether they had a disability or not since there were no prisons. There were special Wards at the labor communes to house disabled criminals who could not be fully rehabilitated by 4M treatments back to full productivity.
The handicap Wards were staffed by people specifically trained for the task. Many mental disabilities could be overcome or at least diminished with ongoing 4M treatments. And people with physical handicaps could still do plenty of work.
The big irony was that the State did ultimately accept disabled people into the labor communes. People just had to commit a serious crime first. Surely the government was not so stupid as to ignore the simple solution to the Volunteer for Labor program failures—get rid of the dumb “no disability” requirement.
Darren and Amber wondered why the State would want and expect serious crimes to be committed as a way out for people. It just didn’t make sense. It was almost an encouragement for people to take a lot of risk to get ahead on the outside, because there was always a backup plan if things didn’t work out.