Any ideas on the number of Judges in Mega City One.

[TordelBack]

I was probably more interested originally in Demographics etc;

I tried and failed to find another post-DoC thread where we teased out the new demographics, but here is a summary of my own thoughts on Judge numbers from the 2007 thread linked to above:

Coming at from another direction, we were recently discussing the '8000 blocks' figure (based on 400mil citizens at 50,000 a block, a measly 50-or-so blocks to a Sector), and how at a mimimum of one judge per block, you ended up with say 10,000 street judges.  I suggested suport staff (including pilots, teks, wardens, wallies, meds, admin, tutors, PSU, psis, various specialists) should be 10 times that number, giving us 100,000 by another route. 

Neat, but even allowing that many 'specialists' are concentrated in Justice Central and the Academy, that means that 301's sector house has only only 40-odd street judges at any one time.  Oddly, this seems close enough to the number of faces we see in The Pit, and in Sector House, but still seems pretty tight.

Incidentally, the same figures suggets 500 successful graduations from the Academy each year to keep the numbers up, assuming a 20 year average career.

If you buy that highly advanced space-calculus, you can knock the Justice Dept figures down to 40,000 post-DoC, and the Academy was down to 600 total at the end of the crisis, from something more like 15,000 cadets.

I'll keep trying to find the original post-DoC demographics thread...

[Dark Jimbo]

Dredd - worked out ok
RICO 1 - not so hot
Kraken - a rum cove I'll agree
RICO 2 - happy days
Dolman - Prodigal son, but a good egg
[Jessica Paris] - not her fault

For every Eustace, there's an Ephram.
For every Joe, a Rico.
For every Rico II, a Kraken.
For every Dolman, a Nimrod.

It's only really Vienna and Randy Fargo's lot that give any ultimate sense of hope for the bloodline.

[ZenArcade]

Dark Jimbo: pithy and colourful! If only Justice Department could provide them with 'prosthetic consciences'*

With respect and thanks to the late and sadly missed Iain M Banks for the phrase.

[Frank]

Coming at from another direction, we were recently discussing the '8000 blocks' figure (based on 400mil citizens at 50,000 a block, a measly 50-or-so blocks to a Sector), and how at a mimimum of one judge per block, you ended up with say 10,000 street judges.  I suggested suport staff (including pilots, teks, wardens, wallies, meds, admin, tutors, PSU, psis, various specialists) should be 10 times that number, giving us 100,000 by another route. 

Neat, but even allowing that many 'specialists' are concentrated in Justice Central and the Academy, that means that 301's sector house has only only 40-odd street judges at any one time.  Oddly, this seems close enough to the number of faces we see in The Pit, and in Sector House, but still seems pretty tight.

If you buy that highly advanced space-calculus, you can knock the Justice Dept figures down to 40,000 post-DoC, and the Academy was down to 600 total at the end of the crisis, from something more like 15,000 cadets.

Just for a bit of context, the police authority for England and Wales counts around 130,000 full time officers amongst its ranks, covering an area with a population of around 55 million. Present day England and Wales have a larger population than post-Chaos Day MC1, but of course enjoy a much lesser population density. A better comparison might be with the Met, whose officers account for 25% (32,500) of the total 130,000 figure, but police just 16% of the total population of England and Wales (8.3 million citizens).

That estimate of 40,000 judges policing 50 million citizens post-Chaos Day (the figure given in the Nerve Centre blurb) gives you a ratio of 1 judge per 1,250 citizens, which is more than 3 times the ratio described by the 1 judge per 4000 citizens figure arrived at by The TordelBack Institute of Fiscal Studies, above. Megacity judges now enjoy a better ratio of helmets to citizens than London bobbies, who number 1 Met officer for every 2,500 pearly kings and queens.

[Frank]

It's only really Vienna and Randy Fargo's lot that give any ultimate sense of hope for the bloodline.

Yeah, it's only the Fargos who become judges who end up causing real problems, which is more an indictment of the system than the bloodline. What Fargo realised after putting a bullet through his head wasn't that he -and by extension, his clones - was uniquely unsuited to having so much unregulated power and control over the lives of others, but that no-one should hold that kind of sway. Such absolute rule, just as in our present day, inevitably results in corruption, failure, and disaster.

[TordelBack]

Aha, here's the thread where we really get into the fineprint of the post-DoC numbers:  http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=36681.0

Here's my own opening gambit from same:

Between 80-85% (350 million of an estimated 400 million+) of the citizens died, as against 60% of Justice Dept (numbers from The Days After, Prog 1789).  However, the machinery of PSU is effectively gone, along with what respect there was for the judges.  Rather than a placid-if-nuts citizenry interspersed with violent crazies and local rebelliousness the Judges now face citywide anarchy.

Most critically, only 600 cadets survived, and presumably precious few of those were seniors (who took the brunt of the rearguard action in the evacuation of the Academy) meaning there's no mechanism for replacement of casualties.  The casualty rates for judges given in The Graveyard Shift (Casefiles 7) illustrate the scale of the problem.

Between 2100 and 0300 hours 7 street judges are listed as having lost their lives, with a further 25 hospitalisations.  That's about 1.25 an hour.  Assuming the graveyard shift (indicated as 2100 to 0500) is significantly worse than the other 16 hours, and also that this is an average night (and I think that's the whole point of that story) lets say the general casualty rate was 1 judge an hour for the day shift and even less for the latter part of the nightshift (0300-0500), giving a conservative total of 25 dead judges a day.  Assume some debilitating injuries and a trickle of long-walks, Titan trips and Academy/Auxiliary redeployments, and you lose about 10,000 street judges a year.

Academy training generally takes 15 years.  So that's 150,000 cadets at any one time, just to keep street judges numbers constant back in 2107, and that's without considering periodic disasters.  However, what's that failure/drop out rate?  Will we be very optimistic and say 25% make it to full eagle?  (I'd bet it's more like 1 in 10, but assuming the largest losses are in the first half of the programme the numbers should trend lower overall).  So you needed maybe 600,000 total cadets in 2107 to ensure a consistent replacement number of 10,000 successful graduations per year.

Reduce that number by 80% to reflect the vastly depleted population of 2134 and a reduced judge force that only needs 2000 new street graduations per year, or about 5 or 6 a day. That requires an Academy of 120,000 kids from 5 to 20. They have 600, most presumably pre-teens, and equally likely to include a mix of non-street types.     

That's a bad place to be.

[TordelBack]

That estimate of 40,000 judges policing 50 million citizens post-Chaos Day (the figure given in the Nerve Centre blurb) gives you a ratio of 1 judge per 1,250 citizens, which is more than 3 times the ratio described by the 1 judge per 4000 citizens figure arrived at by The TordelBack Institute of Fiscal Studies, above. Megacity judges now enjoy a better ratio of helmets to citizens than London bobbies, who number 1 Met officer for every 2,500 pearly kings and queens.

Ah, but from my completely-made-up numbers (I think) I've been arguing that there are now only about 4,000 street judges (aka helmets) left, with the other 36,000 being made up of support staff and ancillary departments.  So that's more like 12,500 citizens per street judge, which is a misleadingly healthy maybe third of the number from before DoC.  My casualty-replacement calculations suggest that you lose 6 of those judges on the average day, meaning the 'stock' is only good for 2 or 3 years. 

[ZenArcade]

TordelBack, I can only stand in awe of the extrapolations contained within your work, it is to your credit.
I guess my conceptual difficulties are at  odds to the need for drama and tension in these stories. The likes of a single  Academy flies in the  face of what strategic planners would consider prudent, never put all of your eggs in one basket. The litany of disasters which Mega City One and Justice Department have  underwent would reinforce this basic fact. I struggle to envisage a single monolithic entity, I could envisage a series of compounds, training areas etc spread through out a large area, for both practical purposes and as a basic dispersal strategy.
In terms of the daily rate of Judicial attrition again I could envisage new standard operational procedures being issued. I could envisage something akin to the CQB tactics used by army combat teams and paramilitary police units today as opposed to that used in urban battles during the last war (with a commensurate drop in casualties).
It would also be reasonable to assume PSU regardless of the initial loss of expertise, infrastructure etc being quickly established. Any modern organisation has emergency plans and runs models where worst case scenarios are envisaged and coping strategies are formulated to be set in place in more or less real time.
Anyhow as I've indicated before this would make for less tension in terms of drama and I could be talking through my hat.

[Frank]

I guess my conceptual difficulties are at odds to the need for drama and tension in these stories

It would have been nice if the problems described above had been the source of drama in the last year or so. As you say, Justice Department must have been rebuilding and restructuring the way it operates at every level, and been reduced to some desperate measures just to stay in control of the few populated sectors of the city in the interim, but most of that is taking place in the margins and off the printed page entirely.

There have been plenty of stories where reference is made to short staffing, but not many which use those difficulties as their dramatic impetus. The time for those kind of stories may have passed already.

[TordelBack]

In terms of the daily rate of Judicial attrition again I could envisage new standard operational procedures being issued. I could envisage something akin to the CQB tactics used by army combat teams and paramilitary police units today....

That certainly seems to be the case with Beeny's team as seen in 'Wastelands'.  Worth noting that we have robots, auxiliaries, soldiers, space marines and foreign transfer judges bolstering the ranks too.

I can't really agree about the Academy of Law - while your idea of training compounds makes perfect sense it's always been presented as a single monolithic building in the strip: THE Academy.  And even if there were multiple campuses, the number of surviving cadets is specifically given as 600 (although subsequent stories suggest that there were many deserters who could potentially return to the fold).

Don't be too impressed by my wafflings - they're largely pulled out of the air, and if you go through the various linked threads you'll see others have much more soundly-based ideas.

[ZenArcade]

Just scoobed a few brief minutes away from work. Sauchie, you are probably right, the time for stories like this has mayby passed. TordelBack, don't hide your flame behind a bushel, I took a stand alone look at the figures for Judge/citizen proportions and came up with a nearly analagous figure (although in a much cruder, less detailed manner).
In fairness to the. Writers they put more effort into the effects of a disaster this time round; as compared to say post Acopolypse War, where we had a couple of stories about fighting robot wrestlers and a super crash fatty  compound.
I suppose the reason I opened this topic is because I'm facinated by a. The physical world in these stories; b. The Mega City concept and c. How organisations, populations and terchnologies wiuld both interact and I suppose juxtapose within reasonably thought out, quasi realistic parameters..
This is a personal opinion of course....I'd just like to see a wee bit more exploration and possibly fleshing out of Dredds world.

[judgerufian]

One more thing to compete against the 'Judges vs cits' figures versus present day 'cops vs people' is that a Judges life expectancy is far lower than a policeman. Add to that the amount of Judges we have seen bite the dust after DoC and the lack of replacements due to no Academy of Law and the situation takes a startling turn for the worse for the helmeted boys (and girls) in black.

[ZenArcade]

Judgerufian. We had touched on the subject of the Academy earlier in the thread.
Both you and other posters have rightly pointed out the extremly grave nature of the loss of the Academy (by far the most challenging of the plenitude of existential threats visited on Justice Department by the Day of Chaos event.
I have postulated previously several short/medium/long term measures which could be immediatly implemented to address this issue. I shall revisit this topic again as it is obviously not without merit.
Firstly: reestablish the Academy immediately. The 600 cadets could be quickley levened with a first year intake in proportion to the number of potential judges require or heck why not double that amount. Now the new intake will only pay dividends after 15 years, but (I'm given to hackneyed adages) a journey of a thousand miles must begin with one step (cheers Chairman Mao). Now the obvious retort is ok but the current judge complement will not last 15 years due to attrition. Ok  (this may seem controversial) every year hundreds of cadets are dismissed as they are not up to spec) why not readmit the top 10 - 20% of each of the previous say 7 - 8  years dismissed cadets and run them through again - desperate times call for desperate measures and anyhow the standard of a dismissed cadet is surely equal in a lot of cases to an transferred foreign Judge. They could be put through the same rigurous 'baptism of fire' orientation as the foreign Judges.
This would surley mean a substantial lessening of the gap to when new Judges come on-line to say 5 - 6 years.
Secondly: Justice Department would need to introduce extraordinary measures to survive in good shape until then. Again I'm not going to totally go over old ground (in terms of this thread) but I had pointed out the likes of utilisation of foreign Judge inductees, changes in SOP's, as TordelBack rightly points out there are Meks, Military, marines, auxillaries (crikey even some evidently reasonably capable citi def units). I could even invisage a recall of long walk Judges. Justice Department tactical planners could initialise an attuned response spectrum exercise (ARSE) programme to allocate increasing force levels to situations as demanded eg auxillaries take on a lot of the humdrum day today duties with low threat levels, Judges next level up, then extremly hazardous situations could be dealt with by multi-dicipline units of meks/military under the direct supervision of a Judge acting as incident co-ordinater. I could go on with other possible solutions to what seem intractable problems.
What I'm trying to say here is that it is not in the nature of organisations like Justice Department to lie down and die. Such is the almost monomaniacial level of drive inherent that what would seem to us to be hopeless would to them be a problem looking a solution.
This may all be moot. Sauchie points out earlier that the writers may have set up this paradigm shift to go off on another direction from that with which we've all become familiar if not to say comfortable with.

[Frank]

This may all be moot. Sauchie points out earlier that the writers may have set up this paradigm shift to go off on another direction from that with which we've all become familiar if not to say comfortable with.

Wagner described turning in a final Day of Chaos script in which the scale of death and devastation was of a much greater magnitude than he'd previously agreed with Rebellion editorial with the same glee and sense of mischief as when he recounts his days as a playground thug and juvenile delinquent in Ohio. "I'm looking forward to seeing what other writers do with what I've left them" he said, in the manner of someone who handed back your bike with a buckled frame and both wheels missing.

I think those other writers and editors were understandably caught off balance, and the material which ran in the immediate aftermath of Chaos Day read like the follow up to the Doomsday or The Day The Law Died level event they were probably expecting, rather than something which effectively brought an end to the Megacity that used to be. Given the circumstances (they had a very short time to set up Trifecta too), they did an admirable job of working reference to those catastrophic events into the stories which followed, but I still get the feeling of a holding pattern being maintained with regard to the wider arc of MC1 history today.

I don't know if they're waiting to see if Wagner fancies plotting a new direction for MC1 or if that's being worked out as we speak, but Titan's good enough to make me forget all the nagging questions about replenishing the ranks of the full eagles and how a 90% empty city might influence attitudes towards both the mutant question and the legitimacy of Justice Department's reign - let alone how Dredd's taken to working alongside the Mechanismo units he did his best to eradicate.

[Dominic O'Rourke]

Just a note on support staff for street judges - and the comparison with the Met - there are 32,500 Police Officers, about 4000 PCSO's and another 5000 members of staff.

So, only 1 support staff for every 4 officers, not 10 for every 1 as mentioned above.

One other comparison with modern day police forces is Outsourcing - from my own experience I would estimate there are another 5 to 10,000 people employed in the private sector whose work the Met Police depend on.

Which brings us to 1 support staff for every 2 officers.