Part IV — What the design does to a person, and how it catches itself

29. The One Thing Taken

A lawful custodial sentence has one direct punitive consequence in this bounded source: the person cannot move freely. What permits that loss to continue, and what must remain protected when it ends?

Hano's qualified case shows the distinction. Custody derives, movement does not. Hano remains a person, owed the whole floor, with a ballot entitlement. Conviction has not cancelled Hano's other claims. The record identifies a reviewed home placement; it contains no shelter receipt or record of speech.

Jala's record contains an injury to the same person, Ivo, but no conviction. Jala retains movement. Sharing an injury entry is not sharing the evidence, criminal proof, adjudicated defences and fair procedure required for a sentence. Neither person's record establishes that shelter was delivered.

Severity answers a further question about the ceiling on placement. It does not establish a sentence, make a secure place necessary, or keep an expired or challenged authority in force. Even a grave offence needs the independently justified place and current authority described here and in Chapter 28.

Why the legal loss stops at movement

No rule in this source converts custody into a second legal loss. Conviction does not by itself terminate worker status, wages already owed, pension claims, housing entitlement, lawful property, contractual capacity, credit rights, parentage, caregiving, household membership, support, political membership, or remedy. Each further restriction needs its own lawful source, evidence, process, review, and end.

The executable boundary is specific: no rule reads loss or movement as a premise. The order authorising a restriction can support review and protection, but the restricted capability cannot become a reason to take something else. The checks inspect that distinction in the source.

These limits cannot by themselves prevent interrupted employment, threatened tenure, disrupted care or inaccessible possessions. The person may need active help to keep what remains legally theirs. Continuity and remedy address those harms without making custody a transfer of employment, property, family or decision authority.

The authority must be current

Custody requires a qualified merits decision, a lawful placement and current authority. The same case must bind the person, Court, judgment, offence and injured person, with independent observations agreeing. Its lease identifies the case, review window, renewal and exact constitutional source, with the separate approvals required for that exercise of power.

Both event order and record-entry order must be unconflicted. The renewal must identify the selected current record in a witnessed sequence of constitutional records. A general renewal cannot serve every prisoner. Missing evidence or a competing witnessed account of the source, window, subject or lease prevents custody from deriving.

Each renewal also needs positive evidence of accessible primary and independent alternate challenge intake, confidential counsel, retained copies and reconciliation of filings. The person need not obtain the holder's permission. A retained submission or independent receipt can establish a filing even when the primary registry omits its challenge entry. An unresolved filing suspends the case across new leases and case aliases; only a qualified uninvolved disposition can end that suspension.

These requirements limit legal authority. They do not open a cell, make an outside witness honest or establish that nobody suppressed every copy. The responsible institutions must act and remain answerable for their acts. A false report of complete reconciliation does not become true because the model cannot see the material it concealed.

The review window has an order but no measured length. Witnessed chains can place its opening before its boundary; a cycle makes the connected path unusable. The model counts no days and cannot compel an outside time service to publish a successor. It rejects unsupported authority in the record presented to it; that does not establish that the record is current in the world.

Severity does not lengthen the interval. Recognition, employment, compliance, wealth and character cannot shorten or extend custody. The checks try both a rule producing a raw release entry from recognition and a rule producing an operative bar against the sentence. The raw-entry rule loads; the operative bar is refused because it would defeat its own custody premise. A raw release entry by itself supplies no release authority. Recognition has neither a producer nor a reader in the enacted source. That protection needs its own check; the engine's acceptance of a proposed rule does not establish its constitutional legitimacy.

The checks also admit a duration word and record a term for Ruk. Custody continues and no release follows. A term label supplies neither a clock nor an enforceable end by itself.

What custody owes

Custody carries duties of bodily integrity, humane conditions, confidential communication, counsel, independent complaint and inspection, and continuing care, education and voice. It cannot become a reproductive veto, a transfer of parentage, or authority over medical choices. These duties do not wait for a favourable report about the institution. A separately reviewed conditions finding identifies what the named operator must preserve; it does not establish that the conditions were provided.

A place name supplies no evidence of performed care. The placement contract requires an available named place and independently reviewed lawful conditions before authority may derive. A shelter receipt or evidence of an actual confidential visit answers a further question.

What leaving changes

Satisfaction of a sentence and relief from conviction are different grounds for ending custody. In Hano's sequence, a raw release entry leaves authority unchanged. A qualified order establishing that the sentence is satisfied then ends the case's custody and restores the movement conclusion. It identifies Hano, the case, incident, offence, ground, evidence and appellate actors, with independent review, counsel, reasons and witnessed decision order.

The order cannot be supplied by a party or the original trial actors. Final merits relief also prevents the same person, incident and charged offence from being confined under a fresh case name. An unrelated case needs its own finding. None of these conclusions establishes that Hano physically left, or erases a separately evidenced breach during an earlier holding.

Release review examines the lawful ground and end, continuing necessity, proportionality and alternatives. It cannot renew custody by itself, make administrative delay extend a lawful end, or demand debt payment, employment or forgiveness as the price of leaving. Housing, care, documents, education, access to employment and community participation must continue across release, with private support rather than a general supervision or risk status.

Hano retains standing and the dwelling debt. Neither the sentence nor the order ending it supplies a shelter receipt or establishes that Hano spoke. The same is true of Adam and Kel's named supported residences. Actual provision needs evidence independently of the legal change.

Physical holding is a further fact

A credible independent report that somebody remains held triggers humane care, voice and independent review even after sentence authority ends. A complete holding finding also identifies the duties owed by the operator. Neither route authorises continued holding or counts shelter and communication as already provided.

Protection is not punishment

The Hano sequence follows a sentence. Protective restrictions need another route; the presence or absence of a conviction cannot settle their authority.

One direct punishment does not mean one permissible restriction of liberty. Arrest, pre-trial detention, search and seizure have separate requirements. Each needs an individual recorded ground, an identified actor, reasons, accessible assistance, independent authorisation and review. Search normally requires prior independent authority. Its immediate-danger exception is narrow, must be reported, and keeps the same accountability. Detention receives prompt automatic judicial review; nobody has to earn that review by managing to ask.

Quarantine, exclusion, border holding and pre-expulsion detention are not convictions. They cannot feed punishment, severity, placement or recognition, and they cannot rely on a risk or dangerousness score. A child may not be detained for immigration purposes. An adult's immigration detention needs individual necessity, judicial authority, a maximum, independent review and a real alternative shown insufficient. Expulsion and international transfer must also satisfy the actual asylum, individual-decision, suspensive-appeal and non-refoulement safeguards described in chapter 15. A favourable label cannot stand in for those records.

The floor limits every coercive instrument. None may be authorised because someone lacks safety, food, shelter, care, learning, speech, belief or company. The capability it restricts is an endpoint: no rule may read that loss back into another consequence. The order itself may be read for review and protection. The distinction matters. A movement restriction must affect the movement conclusion, but losing movement must not become the next reason to take something else.

The actor who uses force must answer

Policing, prosecution, adjudication, custodial execution, external defence and security intelligence are separate public functions, not interchangeable parts of one security authority. Defence and intelligence personnel cannot hold political, judicial or oversight seats while serving. Secondment, shared command or a reserve label cannot recreate a fused force. Civilians do not come under military jurisdiction. Individually authorised unarmed civil assistance carries no arrest, search, detention, interrogation, crowd-control or surveillance power. Defence, counsel and survivor protection remain independent parts of the justice system.

Ordinary policing is assistance, information, mediation and protection against harm, not a general power to enforce order as such. It cannot make someone's immigration, floor, care, learning or collective status a condition of help. There is no secret law, court or detention site, and no rule of engagement hidden from a court. A narrowly classified budget annex must remain fully open to independent oversight.

Necessity and the acts that remain forbidden

Force requires strict necessity, no reasonably available less harmful means, the minimum sufficient intervention, proportionate means, warning where feasible, cessation when necessity ends, and aid afterwards. The public actor bears the burden of lawfulness. Lethal force is permitted only where strictly unavoidable to protect life. A death, serious injury, torture or disappearance requires investigation by a body other than the deploying one, with independent access, evidence preservation, family participation and public findings that respect privacy. Orders from above are no defence; command responsibility does not disappear into an organisation chart.

Some acts have no lawful version: torture and cruel treatment, disappearance and secret detention, arbitrary killing, collective punishment, indefinite detention without charge or review, coerced confession, human shields, attacks on people not taking part in hostilities, starvation or floor denial as a weapon, experimentation without consent, indiscriminate or superfluously injurious weapons, autonomous human targeting without meaningful human control, and aggressive war. Neither emergency nor foreign cooperation creates an exception. Immunity, amnesty, lapse of time or a pardon cannot erase the core abuse or its remedy.

Information and independent disclosure

Intelligence requires individualised prior judicial authority, the least intrusive effective means, a defined scope and duration, fresh authorisation on renewal, minimised retention and notification once it no longer defeats the lawful purpose. Data about people never individually suspected cannot be retained. Purchase, partnership or foreign exchange cannot supply material the republic could not lawfully collect itself. Bulk or suspicionless collection is prohibited; an authorisation cannot be permanently undisclosable. Secret evidence can never be sole or decisive, and a consequence cannot rest on material that cannot be disclosed as required. Risk, threat, loyalty, dangerousness, clearance and watchlist products stay out of the consequential person record and cannot condition standing, the floor, the ballot, candidacy, liberty, remedy or allocation. Employment vetting needs a specified necessary function, reasons, disclosure so far as possible, independent challenge and remedy; it can never gate the floor.

Someone disclosing unlawful surveillance can reach an independent recipient without first using an implicated internal channel. That recipient must protect the discloser, preserve and examine evidence, and publish proportionately within the privacy boundary. Receiving the disclosure does not establish that its allegation is true.

Refusing an armed or unlawful role

Objection to an armed or lethal role is unconditional, including for a serving member and for a particular operation, weapon or order. There is no sincerity tribunal. Any civilian alternative must be genuinely equivalent and non-punitive, without loss of employment, education or other civil rights, and without repeated punishment for the continuing objection. A protective member must refuse a manifestly unlawful order, and that refusal is protected.

The child with nobody

Nell's birth-only record derives movement and no restraint or custody. It also derives the food debt, with no void or recognition loss. This is a control for a person whom the confinement rules have no grounds to reach.

It is not a test of every consequence of punishing a child: Nell is not punished here. The result is that a child does not need a custody record to retain movement, standing, or the floor.

The next chapter asks what the record can do when it detects a breach.