Mega-City One
Mega-City One is a city that features in Judge Dredd.
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History
Mega-City One
President Bill Clinton is briefly replaced and impersonated by a time-travelling mutant criminal. Commercial spaceflight begins in 2001 with the PanAstra shuttle, flying to Mars orbit; the first flight discovers an alien corpse, the first public discovery of alien life.[50] The International Aeronautics and Space Administration offers a ten million credit prize to anyone who finds life on the moon; explorer C.W. Moonie discovers a microscopic virus, infecting himself in the process. Jimmy Carter's head is added to Mount Rushmore. By the late 2020s a conurbation stretches from New York to Washington DC in an attempt to contain the populace of the East Coast states. This will eventually become the first Mega-City, a new kind of urban development to house greater numbers of people. The development causes huge amounts of civil unrest and gang-related crime. Crime had skyrocketed in the overcrowded sprawl, escalating to the point where an alliance of street gangs under P Street Posse raided the White House itself and successfully intimidate juries into acquitting them. This lead to the rollout of the Judges in 2031 - a proposal backed by the citizens, who voted out the congressmen who opposed Eustace Fargo and President Guerney's plan. At first the Judges worked with the existing police forces in the conurbation, with the intention of easing them into obsolesce, and had to force their way through both police and local government. The Governor of New York attempted to oppose the Judges on constitutional grounds, quietly helping to escalate tensions to help his career - ironically he would be saved from a murderer by the Judges, who exposed his crimes and cemented their position. However, 2035 would see hundreds of anti-judge riots from dissidents, fuelled by an ongoing economic slump with inadequate welfare. Crime rates actually doubled in every place the Judges were sent in, due to anti-judge activity, which Justice Department considered a temporary surge that would settle down.
The American government would soon formally name the sprawl the Boston-New York-Philadelphia Autonomous Metropolitan District: the first of the new megacities, leading to its eventual name of Mega-City One. The perceived success of MC-1 would lead to the construction of one in California and Texas. (Official and semi-official timelines have placed MC-1s construction in 2031 and the others being planned in 2039. By 2039, the last police academies had closed.[7] and by 2047, Judges were still outnumbered by police five to one, but the police precincts had been militarised akin to the future Sector Houses. Despite all this, crime remained high. In June of that year, to root out an anti-judicial terrorist group called the Patriots, Justice Department locked down New York for most of a fortnight; by getting away with this, their power and position was consolidated. The population continued to grow as people moved to the city. Talks were in place about splitting the mega-cities into new political entities under the controversial Autonomy Act. In 2051, the first mega-block went up, having demolish a low-income neighbourhood with the promise of new, improved housing within; the corporation building the block reneged on this and sparked a major riot among the newly homeless. In a shape of things to come, the Judges brutally put it down and caused the deaths and injuries of multiple bystanders. The Special Judicial Squad was brought in an attempt to salvage public support. By this point, the senior Judges considered building a mega-city to be the shape of the future. [9] Augustus Umberson built a long-lasting family fortune with construction contracts at the dawn of the city, which he arranged with bribes to city officials and the murder of his rivals.
Overview
When first established, Mega-City One was operated by a municipal government much like that found in real-world cities and towns, with the Autonomy Act giving them greater powers than traditional US states. The Judges soon began to take their own autonomous action, starting with immigration controls that the Mayor's office only approved after the fact. The Chief Judge was answerable only to the President of the United States. However, in the political vacuum left in the wake of the sentencing of President Booth and dissolution of the US Senate in 2071, the Judges are left as the de facto government of both Mega-City One and the United States of America. The Judges, organized into the Justice Department of Mega-City One, are responsible for seeing to the total welfare of the citizens of Mega-City One, overseeing welfare and housing programs as well as collecting taxes, governing businesses, and the necessary duties of policing and sentencing. However, for more mundane and non-essential tasks the Justice Department created and still maintains a municipal council that is lead by the Mayor of Mega-City One.
Mega-City One's laws are harsh, with many crimes not found in present-day law. Possession of sugar, for example, is illegal, as is the smoking of tobacco outside of licensed Smokatoriums, and coffee is banned as an illegal stimulant. The laws are enforced by the Judges, who are a combination of a judge and police officer. Ordinary laws are enforced more harshly than the present day, as a political choice to deal with the high crime rate. Most ordinary citizens are sent to the Iso-Cubes, tiny cells located within huge prisons. For example, one strip saw a citizen sentenced to a month in the iso-cubes for littering, while in another story a citizen was given 6 months for jay walking. Judges impose immediate sentences on the spot, usually lengthy sentences of imprisonment (or "encubement"). In extreme cases even the death penalty may be imposed, although relatively sparingly compared with the present day, reserved for mass murder or endangering the security of the city, but sometimes it is used simply to make an example or to intimidate the citizens.[33] Nevertheless, many criminals are shot to death while resisting arrest, and resistors who survive Judge assault often receive a whole-life cube term.
The Judges themselves are not exempt from the law; in fact they are expected to obey it more strictly than any other. A violation that would earn a citizen a few months in an Iso-Cube would get a Judge a twenty-year sentence, served as hard labor on Saturn's moon, Titan, after surgical modification to enable the convict to survive outside without needing an expensive space suit. When Judges do make a minor mistake (anything where the citizen is alive and not in an intensive care ward) such as wrongful arrest or search they do have to pay the citizen a compensation fee if there is no crimes to be charged with. On that basis, if they can't find any evidence for the main charge, then they will look for any minor crime or misdemeanours to charge to citizen with to get themselves off the hook.
Inhabitants
- Donald Byron Ambrose :
- Tony Blore :
- Denny Oneman :
- Judge Dredd :
Notes
- Mega-City One was created by Rebellion Development and featured in the setting of the 2000 A.D. universe.
In other media
Films
Video games
Appearances
- Judge Dredd:
External Links
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