Licensed governments and corporations can buy criminal warrants and compel paid frontier labor for the sentence duration.
A purchaser pays the court's warrant plus a franchise fee of roughly five times the warrant for every sentence cycle, along with housing, transport, and a matching payout to the offender upon release. Return passage and a death tax are also required.
High-warrant, short-sentence offenders are rarely economical, but repeated crimes lower warrants until purchase becomes nearly certain. Franchisees usually build colonies, factories, or mines rather than fight wars. Carl calls the arrangement slavery despite the delayed wages and survival incentives.
Penal franchising is the practical consequence behind an otherwise abstract post-crawl warrant.