Sky People/Crime and Punishment

Among the various human factions on the ground and in space, punishments for various crimes take many forms depending on the severity of the crime and the age of the criminal. Prisoners of war are also confined and/or tortured.

Juvenile Lockup


If someone under the age of 18 is arrested, they are held in Juvenile Lockup until they turn 18 at which point they are tried before The Council for the crime(s) they committed. From this trial, the accused can either be acquitted or found guilty and floated. After the oxygen shortage on the Ark reached critical levels, these underage Delinquents were sent to Earth to see if it was survivable and to give the Ark more time to fix the life support problem.

Flotation


Capital Punishment in the form of Flotation occurred on The Ark when someone the age of 18 or older broke the law. This is a type of execution where a person is put into an airlock chamber which is then opened, exposing them to the outside elements and forcing the person's body to be sucked into the open space, resulting in death from lack of oxygen and negative pressure. Rarely, an adult prisoner may be granted a stay of execution by The Council, as in the case of Abigail Griffin.

Death by a Thousand Cuts


Capital punishment in the form of Death by a Thousand Cuts occurs when every single member of the clan takes a turn cutting the convicted before feeding them to the bugs. For more egregious crimes (as in the case of Finn Collins), they start with fire and take the hands, tongue, and eyes. Everyone gets a turn with the knife before the Commander ends it with the sword, if the person is still alive by then. In other variations, the number of cuts the person is sentenced correlates with the number of deaths the person is charged (as in the case of Carl Emerson).

Sky People Stockade
Shortly after Camp Jaha was established, a secure room was quickly set up to detain prisoners (specifically Bellamy and Murphy). Over time, this room became known as the "Stockade" as more people were imprisoned. When Carl Emerson was captured, Raven built an airtight prison out of an airlock for him so Jackson could safely remove his outer protection to treat his radiation burns.



Grounder Prison
The Grounders also have their own holding cell for prisoners. After Thelonious Jaha was sold to a bounty hunter, he was delivered to the Commander and imprisoned in an underground subway station. When Marcus Kane followed Rivo to a Grounder village, he was also apprehended and placed into the same room with Jaha. The Commander expected the two to battle to the death in retribution for the Tondc massacre, however, ultimately ended up releasing both of them in an attempt to get the Sky People to leave their lands.

Banishment
Once on Earth, the Delinquents quickly discovered they needed rules to survive. As co-leaders of the 100, Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake ordered the banishment of John Murphy after the suicide of Charlotte.

In the Grounder culture, there are Grounders who have no clan because they or a family member may have been seen as a "stain on the bloodline" due to birth defects and cast out, as in the cases of Zoran and Emori.

Shock Lashing
After the rest of the Sky People arrived on earth, they put into effect the Exodus Charter. Under the Exodus Charter, unauthorized use of firearms was to be punishable as a felony with 10 shock lashes. Abigail Griffin was punished after committing said felony (providing guns to the Delinquents).

Torture
Torture is used by the various factions to get information out of prisoners of war. It was first used by the Delinquents on Lincoln and proved ineffective. Later, it was again used by the Delinquents when they questioned Delano, leading to false information and the Tondc Massacre. The Sky People also threatened to use torture with both Rivo and Emerson in order to get them to talk.

Outcast Grounders, including Delano, also used torture in the case of Murphy, who was tortured for three days for information on the Delinquents which he ultimately provided. He was later released by Anya to spread infection to the Delinquents.

Kill Order
The Commander can place a kill order on someone's head and only she can remove it. A kill order was placed on Lincoln's head for an unspecified reason, leaving him effectively imprisoned at Arkadia.

Notes and Trivia

 * In the novel, a nurse injected the convicted person with a lethal serum before flotation occurred.
 * Bellamy Blake was charged in absentia for his attempted assassination of Chancellor Jaha in Pilot in order to get on the drop ship with his sister, Octavia. He was later pardoned in Unity Day by Chancellor Jaha in exchange for revealing it was Commander Shumway who had set up the assassination attempt.