Real Life Arkham City

As many of you know by now Batman Arkham City centered around the idea of building a prison within Gotham where part of the city is walled off and criminals live as they see fit.

A radical proposal however much the same idea was implemented in Hong Kong with the Kowloon Walled City. A former police constable where I live who is now the Director of Public Prosecutions proposed in discussing problem areas that the worst places are cordoned off. And in further discussions on the problem with crime and revolving door prisons the idea had gained some small support.

It could even be argued that some communities do disconnect themselves from problem areas in the means of business not willing to operate in such areas, families fleeing the threats within, public transportation and deliveries ceasing and even emergency services such as the police and ambulances not willing to enter such areas, or fear of being led into a trap.

Would a real life Arkham City be possible? Could it be done? Should it be done? Would providing a playground for criminals who cannot be reformed be answer to keeping them happy and out of the way of others? Or would it simply make the problem worse?

Possible? Yes.

Could it be done? Its been done. (Sometimes unintentionally)

Should it be done? Depends. Why are you asking this question?

The Playground for Criminals thing would probably only work if they were more or less harmless criminals.

Making things worse largely depends on how you define worse.

Basically, anytime the Law gives up and retreats instead of impossing itself on an area is this situation.

Similar things happened to the infamous Inner Cities, Pirate Havens, and "Rouge States" like North Korea, Cuba, USA, Mexio etc.

When the guys in charge can't keep the law breakers locked up, the fall back plan is to keep them locked out.

I thought it's going to be about Lovecraft. I am disappoint.

I think there is such a prison-town in South America. Peru or Bolivia, IIRC.

There's a real ethical problem if people are being born in there.

There's also what Norway did: http://www.cracked.com/article_19489_5-terrible-ideas-that-solved-huge-global-problems.html

Not to mention the problem of finding a reptile-named veteran if your president crashes in one.

That does already exist, in Venezuela.

Basically they take the worst of the worst and put it them all in a prison where the guards are in the bounds just to be sure nobody escapes, and let them their way...

I think this is unbearable in a first world country by many reasons

Yeah, as Arkham City, Escape from LA York and so on demonstrate, the idea falls down as soon as said convicts organize themselves to the point where they either become a functioning city that's too powerful to quell, a terrible threat to the outside world, or both.

I read just now that some of the USA was used as a British penal colony, as of course was Australia. So you might already be living in a place that essentially evolved from this :)

Technically, the Puritans were allowed to come to the Americas because it got them the hell out of England (who found them obnoxious).

The earliest Africans in the Atlantic Slave Trade also started as criminals/prisoners of other tribes that were sold to Europeans.

Siberian Gulags can be this. Very popular during Communist Russia.

P.O.W. camps too, even War Criminals are free to do as they wish when guards are stretched thin and the order to shoot the prisoners to reduce workload isn't going to happen.

Should it be done? Depends. Why are you asking this question?

For a DPP to suggest this, even in jest, shows the frustration faced in dealing with criminals to even suggest fencing off the worst areas and virtually abandoning them. To a certain extent the idea has been implemented on different levels, from abandonment up to and including the police to a concentrated effort to turn the area into a prison. Likewise there is a little support when bringing up the idea with others frustrated with crime, and given there have been real life examples some must have thought the idea had merit. For me I was interested in hearing what others thought of the idea, what the pros and cons might be.

I can see one potential problem. Some criminals might see this as party time and do whatever they can, brake as many laws as they can, to be placed into such a prison.

...yeah, I think I like Norway's idea better.

Of course, making mistakes and then doubling down on them when they don't work is popular in both the US and Europe lately.

edited 6th Sep '12 4:09:21 PM by Karkadinn

The norwegians didn't invented nothing

We, spaniards are pioneers in the giving freedom thing, in fact, often we even don't get the criminals caught in the first time

When we have the largest prison population per capita (730 per 100,000), a way to reduce the recidivism rate would be rather nice. Rehabilitation just might be the ticket.

Of course, the political climate here in the US would make such a proposal pretty much fall flat on its face. Imagine the social outrage to such a prison system.

Re: the OP

Didn't they just use to call it Australia.

edited 6th Sep '12 5:17:37 PM by nightwyrm_zero

We still need a Batman though.

edited 6th Sep '12 6:52:31 PM by IraTheSquire

True, true. They were more prisons in the traditional sense as I recall, rather than Escape From New York.

It's kind of funny, because this thread popped up while I've been on an Avernum binge, and it's basically the premise. Twice actually — Avernum is exiles from a jackboot empire, and within Avernum is the Abyss, who are exiles from the rest of it on account of actually being abhorrent people who kill dudes instead of just looking funny at jackboots.

It doesn't turn out favorably for the people who perpetrated either one. Over the course of the first trilogy, Avernum breaks its containment, assassinates the emperor twice, and proceeds to beat the shit out of the empire in a war. The Abyss turns into a festering hive of organized crime that regularly bypasses or overpowers its containment and goes a-murdering all over the main caves for funsies.

EDIT: Apparently the forum parser deletes the word "titular"? What?

edited 6th Sep '12 8:32:26 PM by Pykrete

The important thing though would be to televise it and make it into a reality show.

I would be Batman...

With the money enough, I could be Batman

I'M BATMAN

see?

It's probably because nobody on TV Tropes knows how to use the word correctly...

the thing the title refers to? EG, "in batman, the titular character dresses like a bat"

Nope.

2. "From which a title is taken"

As in, the thing the movie or whatever is named after. Which means yes, that's a correct if unnecessary use of the word. But that's a thing for somewhere else.

edited 7th Sep '12 1:22:23 PM by Pykrete