Villain incarceration and transportation

These days, the technology behind keeping supers imprisoned is pretty good. It wasn't always like that. In fact, "villains can escape from jail a week after capture" is such a persistent meme thanks to decades of poor understanding of super-biology and lack of experience.

Chemical restraints

The current state of the art in super incarceration is chemical restraint. These are drugs, either "generic" or tailored to an individual (or set of powers), that inhibit the use of one or more super-powers. Part of the goal of the Transhuman Capability Catalog was to track the specific mechanisms behind powers. Based on this information, companies like Persona and Pfizer are able to synthesize suppression drugs.

The use of these drugs has been evaluated for constitutionality in many of the circuit courts within the United States. No legal challenge has reached the Supreme Court as of yet, and it's doubtful that they would hear one - there's too much at stake to meddle with something that's working.

The actual administration of these drugs depends on the super. Some are ingested with food, others are injected, and others are delivered as an aerosol in the prisoner's cell. The drugs can take effect anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours after delivery, and could be effective for hours or days. The first and second generation of power suppressors are now off the market since it was proven that almost all supers would develop a tolerance and eventual immunity to their effects.

Occasionally a prison will experiment with attaching collars containing suppression drugs to their super-inmates. The goal is to create a system that maintained the suppression while also allowing the inmate to roam around the complex with less supervision.

Physical restraints

Supers who are unable to break out of a jail cell, one way or another, are pretty rare. That said, some do exist. Most prisons would prefer their existing cells to an expensive drug deal with Big Pharma, so there's a fair amount of competition for "easy" villains.

Prisoner transfers

When a villain needs to be moved - to another facility, or to stand trial, or something similar - it's a big deal. The cops keep the transfer route a secret, even from other departments, until almost the day of the transfer.

Here are a few ways that villain transfers have been detected and interfered with:

• Prison financial records indicated a cancellation of the power suppression drug order, along with a requisition for vehicles.
• Suppression drugs were replaced with a placebo by an insider.
• A prison placed orders for a tailored suppression drug despite not having the prisoner for which they were tailored.
• Guards or other police officers took a bribe to reveal the details of the route.

ACTION is pretty good about providing security for this work these days, so most prison-break scenarios for villains require a fair amount of inside information. Acquiring insider assets, keeping them paid, and getting actual useful information from them are all big challenges for villains who want to take care of their fellows. But if you do break another villain out of the slam, you can and should expect plenty of gratitude. The value of this cannot be overstated.

Q&A: Why is 9/11 so significant?

I sometimes get asked - always by supers - "what is the significance of 9/11?" They think that just because there have been violent supervillain attacks in the United States, that a couple of towers coming down shouldn't be a big deal.

9/11 was a big deal for the same reason that the OKC bombing was a big deal: it was done by mundanes. Don't know why this matters? Let me break it down.

Super-terrorism

When a supervillain knocks down a building, it starts a very definite chain of events. The Feds get involved, because any violent crime involving powers is automatically flagged as an act of terror. That opens the floodgates of Federal money, Federal law enforcement resources, and Federal jurisdiction. Next, whoever perpetrated that shit gets his ass nailed to the wall if the local heroes, ACTION, the FBI, or whoever can do it. Next, the owners of the building that got aced call their insurance company's claim representative, hand over the ACTION paperwork, and get paid. Next, the insurance company files the paperwork to put a lien on any stolen property the supervillain had that could have been recovered. Finally, they call up some local outfit, like the MTF, and ask them to do repairs. Again, this usually comes out of ACTION's budget, and is paid for by the American taxpayer. Democrats love this because it gives them an excuse to raise taxes. Republicans love this because it lets them appear tough on crime. Independents hate it, because I dunno, nobody votes them into office so they'll bitch about anything.

What you should have noticed about this sequence is that it's very cut-and-dried, and it centers around one guy - the villain. The Man just has to mobilize some force, ride in like the Lone Ranger, and put boot to neck. Americans lap this shit up like sweet, sweet candy. You think it's a coincidence we're a nation of cowboys? America saves the day in a big, visible way, and that makes everyone happy. Furthermore, it's preventable! You just lock that villain up, and you lock up any other villains you come across, and voila, no more buildings go tumbling down.

The invisible enemy

Now we go back to 9/11. Who did it? It took weeks, months, or years to puzzle it all out. It was the sort of crime that could have been done by anybody with the right motivation. It's the sort of crime that could still be done, despite the security theater the government has put in place since then. It's the sort of crime that an awful lot of people want to do, because of America's absolutely racist, intolerant, violent policies toward other countries. The CIA overthrow the democratically elected government of a country, put a man in place to keep the oil running, and then pundits and hawks talk about bombing them because they don't like Americans for some reason. Imagine!

There's no villain here to lock up. There's no bright costume to point at and say "it was that guy". And deep down, the people in power, and the American citizen, know that they're out of their depth. All of America's mechanisms for dealing with super-crime are useless against an enemy without a face. It costs millions to incarcerate a single super-villain, but it will cost trillions to fully prosecute a war against who America thinks its enemies are - and that war will create still more.

In short, America is dealing with an invisible, intangible, infinitely large enemy that it created, and that grows stronger with every attack. Wouldn't you be afraid?

Veteran villains' reactions

Why were veteran villains like me horrified by 9/11? Why did you see pictures of Professor Pulsar on television, weeping tears through his mask? First is obviously the wholesale loss of life. Few villains are willing to kill so many civilians, and many - I hope most - of us prefer not to murder civilians at all. But secondly, we recognized immediately, like the American All-Stars did, what must have happened, and what it would mean.

The stress of dealing with this new reality tore the All-Stars apart and paved the way for the formation of hero teams like the Icons and Team Lambda. Villains have felt the backlash in different ways. The upgraded security apparatus that America put in place has focused more scrutiny on us, the way it's focused on everyone and everything else. That's one more reason we dress in colorful costumes and battle heroes in casual slug-fests. We know what "serious" looks like, and none of us are eager for the hammer to come down. Pageantry and sportsmanship is better than an angry Fed.

Q&A: Law enforcement and superheroes

"Al Capony" writes in with a very logical question:

If vigilante justice is illegal, why do the police tolerate superheroes? Why am I the only one they're trying to arrest?

Detective Mark Jamieson of the Seattle PD notably said, "just because he's dressed up in costume, it doesn't mean he's in special consideration or above the law." This is high-minded, but impractical. The cops run into a number of problems trying to restrain supers. Let's run down that list, then see what they did about them.

Jurisdiction: Almost every law enforcement agency (LEA), from the FBI down to the campus cops, has a jurisdiction. This can be national or even international in scope, or it can be at the city or state lines. Outside of their turf, the cops lose their power. But by their nature, supers can easily move from place to place, often undetected, and frequently faster than the cops can move themselves.

One of the legal tools created to work around these problems was the escalation of severity for any crime where powers were used. By this, "powers" meant "abilities which a reasonable observer would recognize as superhuman", though that definition has been challenged in court. By making powered crimes, from murder to jaywalking, a Federal case, local LEAs could get Fed assistance, but more importantly, Fed money. In practice this doesn't work as well as anyone hopes. National law enforcement doesn't have the money or manpower to shut down every supervillain.

Technique: A lot of police technique boils down to "exhaust the suspect" - like the early humans who hunted wild animals on the plain, we'd simply out-run the prey until it was tired, then pounce. But supers have far more stamina, resilience, and physical strength than the average police officer. Perp sweating fails miserably for similar reasons. You can still get to supers psychologically, but you can't just lean on them until their bodies grow tired - you'll fail first.

Education has been available for decades on how super biology works, and the international law enforcement community has traded tips on how to effectively deal with supers, but not every little podunk town has the budget to send its officers to class for this sort of thing, and even larger cities like Atlanta or Minneapolis find themselves choosing between supervillain containment training and a few new squad cars.

Economics: The actual cost to restrain a supervillain can be 10 to 50 times that of any dangerous mundane. Apprehension, processing, and incarceration can take a big chunk out of any department's budget. Corporations like Persona might be selling power-suppressing drugs to bigger prisons, but that still costs somebody money.

Alright, so there's serious problems. Then what do the cops do about it?

Stool pigeons, snitches, ringers, and insiders have been tools of law enforcement since there was such a thing as law enforcement. The cops have never shied away from using outsiders to help them do their job, and superheroes are just the latest incarnation of that phenomenon. If a "civilian" wants to "assist the police" in apprehending a bad guy, the cops are perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to how it happened.

Everyone would strongly prefer that heroes turn "legit", of course. Some people, like Bluescreen, did just that - he gave up his old life and became an official lawman out of a sense of civic duty. For those that are willing to work with the cops, but don't want to wear a badge, ACTION exists to bridge the gap and file the paperwork so a hero's bust doesn't get thrown out in court. Some heroes want to do their own thing but not be tied down at all, though. Some do get chased by the cops, but most don't, because it's far more practical to go after the dangerous lawbreakers than the helpful ones.

So the short answer is that the cops tolerate vigilante heroes because they can't afford not to.

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P.S. Pyrepower was squealing at your moniker and wanted to know if you're a My Little Pony fan. Kids these days.

Groups of Note: ACTION

Individual supers are good to know about, but organizations are pretty important too. Today I'll start by talking about the biggest and most important one any supervillain should be aware of.

The American Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Operations Network, or ACTION, was created by the UNCLE SAM Act, passed in April of 1996 and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. If you were curious, UNCLE SAM here stands for Upholding National Counter-terrorism and Law Enforcement by Supporting American Metahumans. I hope you guys know that there's interns on Capitol Hill who do nothing but think up witty acronyms.

American superhumans had contributed a great deal of effort in cleanup and rescue operations in the immediate wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, and the public reaction to the supers' presence was extremely positive. Newspapers, television stations and media figures all clamored for the government to reward these heroes somehow, and to "do more" (though just what more could be done wasn't clear).

An early draft of the legislation was making the rounds among super advocacy groups, modeled on the Peace Corps Act of 1961. After a newspaper editorial famously declared that "these incredible men and women and their god-given gifts have bravely sacrificed for their fellow man, and they deserve to see some action from the government", the law was rewritten for the particulars of the moment and passed with a healthy majority in both chambers of Congress.

The UNCLE SAM act provided the following:

• Health care benefits identical to those of firefighters and other first responders, for any volunteers who made a "significant effort" toward rescue efforts. Practically speaking, this was unnecessary given the recuperative powers of superhumans - but it made a big difference when a court case in 1997 extended these rights to immediate family members.
• An agreement to "respect and honor the anonymity of persons rendering significant assistance" to such rescue efforts. Without this clause, most supers would be reluctant to help.
• Additional college tuition or credit incentives for American superhumans who joined law enforcement bodies.
• The creation of ACTION, a joint effort from national intelligence agencies and law enforcement organizations who would in turn contribute their expertise to NGOs and private super-teams.

What ACTION Supposedly Does

On paper, the agency was meant to do the following things:

• Eliminate inter-agency barriers and share intelligence information (subject to regulation) between organizations like the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI, and so forth.
• Facilitate the granting of security clearances to individual supers or teams of supers, subject to appropriate background checks and a record of reliability.
• The sharing of relevant intelligence information with cleared individuals.
• Tasking individual supers or super-teams based on intelligence gained.

Members of ACTION are U.S. Marshals, FBI special agents, or similarly trained individuals. They will possess a security clearance and are pretty hard-assed about sticking to it.

ACTION falls under the purview of the Executive Branch, though it isn't a separate department the way the FBI falls under the Department of Justice. It's more like a shared agreement between DOJ, DOD, the Secret Service, and other departments. As a result, it's immune to many types of Congressional oversight (if Congress calls your department head in for questioning, your activities shift to another department), but vulnerable to a lot of Congressional meddling.

What ACTION Actually Does

These days, ACTION acts as the "super-cops". If there's a supervillain committing crimes (go us!), they theoretically have jurisdiction because of the way laws about using powers have been written. The use of superpowers in the process of committing a crime automatically raises the "act of terror" flag and that lets the Feds come in and wave their dicks around.

One of the reasons this works is that state and local law enforcement frequently do not have the budget, training, time, or interest in working up a super-crimes division internally. ACTION provides the muscle and picks up the tab, but no cop likes having someone from out of town come in and throw their weight around - and especially not when they keep secrets like ACTION does.

ACTION can't directly involve the military, but they can get the National Guard mobilized without too much effort, which is often good enough to deal with a newbie Stage 4. If that isn't sufficient, they can deputize friendly supers to help out.

They are well trained in anti-super tactics. Unlike the Grasscutters, their goal is generally containment rather than assassination. They use power-jamming chemical cocktails developed by people like Transhuman Research Solutions (now Persona).

Dealing With ACTION

In general, if you attracted their attention, you've made it to the big leagues. They don't have unlimited resources, and often let local heroes deal with villains who aren't endangering large numbers of civilians or destroying property en masse. But once they're on your trail, you had better be awesome.

I've had ACTION after me since their founding - I've been around for forty years, kids - but they always find someone more important to chase. I'm not enough of a public menace to merit a dedicated squad, which means I'm free to do the things I really want to do. And that is how to be a supervillain.