The North Pacific Investigation Department Bill

Greetings to the Regional Assembly.
Today, I wish to propose a bill that in my opinion would be a good addition to the Judiciary of The North Pacific.
If you would look at the Codified Law of The North Pacific, and specifically at section 6.7: The Attorney General, you will notice that the Attorney General and his/her deputies are basically given the responsibility of investigating crimes and prosecuting alleged criminals in The North Pacific. They prosecute alleged criminals and they must investigate and collect evidence in order to be able to prove the guilt of the alleged criminals. Well, in the Bill I am proposing, it would basically narrow down the responsibility of the Attorney General and his team to prosecuting only. The Bill would create a department with a role of investigating the crimes and reporting evidence to the Attorney General for prosecution. This defines the role of the Attorney General more clearly and centralizes and narrows their role to prosecution rather than prosecution and investigation. I believe that this would be better since the Attorney General and his staff would have one responsibility to work on and would make the job more defined and easier to manage.
I look forward to your comments.
Here's the bill:

NPID Bill:

1. In the Codified Law of The North Pacific, after Section 6.7, insert a new section, 6.8, that reads:

Section 6.8: The North Pacific Investigation Department

46. The North Pacific Investigation Department will consist of one Chief Investigator and no fewer than three, or greater than four, Officers.
47. The Chief Investigator and Officers must be members of the Regional Assembly.
48. The Chief Investigator shall be nominated by the Attorney General and shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of the Regional Assembly.
49. The Officers shall be appointed by the Chief Investigator.
50. The Chief Investigator and Officers may be removed from office by two-thirds majority vote of the Regional Assembly.
51. The North Pacific Investigation Department will investigate alleged crimes and collect evidence of such alleged crimes.
52. The North Pacific Investigation Department will present evidence of alleged crimes to the Attorney General for prosecution.

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At first glance, I like this a lot. It's kind of like the investigative arm of the police.

I will say that if the AG is nominating these people then to me it makes sense to make this an arm of the AG's office. I do, however, like formalizing this process and really think that if this were available to AG's it would make life a whole heck of a lot easier.

I like the idea... but much of a prosecutor's case depends on the strength of the evidence gathered. I don't know that there are enough people in any forum government to justify splitting those responsibilities. It's not like the AG is overworked as it is.

In reply to Treize_Dreizehn:
While I do understand what you're saying regarding the strength of evidence, I am most likely sure that the NPID can gather strong evidence since collecting evidence and investigation is their primary role.
As for splitting responsibilities, I do understand that most Attorney Generals can handle both prosecution and investigation, but I believe that specializing an agency or group with collecting evidence is better because it organizes the tasks of the Attorney General. That way the Attorney General and Staff work on building a case against the alleged criminal based on evidence collected by the NPID. It makes everyone's job easier and more organized.

EDIT: Grammar Correction.

punk d:

At first glance, I like this a lot. It's kind of like the investigative arm of the police.

I will say that if the AG is nominating these people then to me it makes sense to make this an arm of the AG's office. I do, however, like formalizing this process and really think that if this were available to AG's it would make life a whole heck of a lot easier.

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I do understand your suggestion about it being part of AG office; however, for one thing, the AG only nominates the Chief Investigator who in turn appoints Officers to the Department.
Secondly, the NPID would have to work with the AG since they present evidence to the AG's office. So they don't have to be an arm of the AG's office, because in the end, the result is the same whether they are part of the AG's office or not = they will work and cooperate together.

~Tomb

While I like the idea of this, at first glance, I'm not sure it makes sense in execution.

One of the common complaints about the AG's office is that based on the nature of the game, and the inherent technical limitations of the forum, actual investigation is practically impossible. The AG can't go digging through PMs, can't get a warrant for other forums, can't compel anybody to testify against anybody else. What evidence exists can only be gathered when other people decide on their own to turn it in. None of these problems would be alleviated by splitting the duties out into another office, and I think that that means its officers would largely have nothing to do. Sometimes they might have to sort things and organize them, but with no powers to compel, they're very limited.

I agree with Treize and SillyString on this.

During my term as AG I delegated almost all the work to others, that seems to be the direction your proposal is driving at.

At present investigative authority is very centralised, and that means if my assistants get too chaotic, I can fire them without any controversy.

If you get investigators who want investigations for the sake of investigations then it gives the community a headache.

If you get an expert prosecutor into office then there is no need for helpers anyway because he can do it all himself.

When I made this proposal, I did have in mind that this is a game, and not real life, and that collecting evidence is different; however, I did not think to the point of drawing the conclusion that the Officers might actually have very limited powers.
I do appreciate the Judicial Staff's comments and reviews about this.
Of course, the Judicial Staff has much more experience than I in judicial matters especially since I have not occupied any position in the Judiciary and specifically in the Attorney General's office.
If the North Pacific as a whole sees that the creation of the Department is useless for the most part, then I am willing to abandon the idea and move on to something different.
However, before doing that, I would like to hear more of the community's opinions and ideas regarding this.
Looking forward to reading your comments.

~Tomb

I love the idea but like it's been posted before it's not really practical. I dont have any experience on the judicial side of matters but it seems like we don't really have that many people/cases to really warrant an entire investigation staff, not to mention the way of collecting evidence is very different from real life.

Didn't I suggest exactly the same idea and get laughed at for it?

In all logic, the AG's office needs more ability to investigate alleged crimes so that the AG can really back up indictments before filing them. That alone will enable a standard of evidence as applied to indictments.

As far as practicality, I think that it can be practical and practicable. It's not very difficult to do something like this in the context of TNP RP. I like the idea.

I find myself in agreement with Roman for once :O

Of course, by what means do these investigators go about finding evidence? Surely interrogation would be a violation of some clause of the Bill of Rights or something...

Lord Nwahs:

I find myself in agreement with Roman for once :O

Of course, by what means do these investigators go about finding evidence? Surely interrogation would be a violation of some clause of the Bill of Rights or something...

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That concept crossed my mind but for the sake of brevity I didn't mention it (and also, I wanted to see who would say exactly what you said).

If the information requested originated from 'foreign forums', you would have to get permission from whomever was on that forum in compliance with their rules.

The major issue in that department is whether or not such information is in violation of the 'foreign forum' TOS as per privacy. I am involved with running a couple of NS related forums and publicly divulging IP addresses to non-law enforcement entities is strictly prohibited for any purpose whatsoever. Publicly posted information is another story, but IP addys are sacrosanct, even if no RL personage is can be associated with it.

This makes it impossible to prove that a certain person is someone else on another forum unless that person freely admits it in no uncertain terms, end even then, the IP addresses involved are sacrosanct and divulging them may be a RL crime.

I agree with others here that though the idea is perhaps sound it would be difficult for this new office to be effective and worthwhile and for that reason this does not have my support

Though I do propose this amendment to the bill.

46. The North Pacific Investigation Department will consist of one Chief Investigator and the count of officers shall be three. The count shall be three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three officers. Five is right out.

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Yrkidding:

I agree with others here that though the idea is perhaps sound it would be difficult for this new office to be effective and worthwhile and for that reason this does not have my support

Though I do propose this amendment to the bill.

46. The North Pacific Investigation Department will consist of one Chief Investigator and the count of officers shall be three. The count shall be three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three officers. Five is right out.

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That's like the most redundant amendment ever, and with faux-archaic language to boot.

I like it!

My concern here is that such a body would then require an equivalent body for putative defendants, and the same amount of lead time in order to balance the degree of equal and fair treatment that our Bill of Rights demand, and it would cause every case to take months simply because defendants would be entitled to the same level of investigative resources before they could be called upon to enter a plea, much less proceed with a trial.
I can think of a few other resource and timing issues to go with that, but I think this presents a large enough of a hurdle as it is.

Okay, everyone.
So as I see it, for the most part, implementing this would be difficult and it would just add to the length of cases instead of shortening them and making a case more orderly. It would require a lot of work to get it to work, and as I see it even when it would start working, it's not guaranteed to make prosecution and investigation more efficient.
I thank everyone who gave a share in this proposal.

And I would like to give a special thanks to the Speaker of the Regional Assembly, Zyvetskistaahn.
This is my first RA Bill proposal, and I thank him for the formatting help and the advice.

Thank you.

~Tomb

Yrkidding:

46. The North Pacific Investigation Department will consist of one Chief Investigator and the count of officers shall be three. The count shall be three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three officers. Five is right out.

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lol

And lob ye the Holy Hand Grenade at thine enemy and blow him to bits, in all they mercy.