A criminal sentencing scheme combining a credit-valued warrant with a sentence clock that runs from conviction.
The Syndicate does not maintain long-term prisons. Courts assign a sentence measured in cycles and a monetary warrant; lighter first crimes tend to have higher warrants and shorter terms, while repeated convictions lower the warrant and may extend the time up to about twenty cycles.
The clock begins at sentencing even if no one arrests the offender. A first shoplifting case might produce one cycle and fifty thousand credits, while Carl's assault could mean roughly three cycles and thirty thousand. Low warrants make forced franchise purchase increasingly likely.
The system replaces incarceration with tradable enforcement value and timed vulnerability.