"Part of it is probably that we just don't have the technology for it at home and so I'm not desensitized to it at all but even when I have considered the general concept in science fiction contexts I consider it a fairly important principle that people's minds ought to be inviolable."

"That makes sense."

"Putting people in prisons changes their minds too, usually in the wrong direction - makes them more violent -"

"Giving people ice cream induces mental change, that's obviously not the line I'm drawing."

"I'm not sure there's a line, just lots of different things with lots of different effects on people."

"I perceive there to be a line. I admit it is not a fine line."

"For what it's worth, it's very uncommon. Crimes are rare, and often occur under circumstances that leave us convinced they won't recur."

"When you say uncommon what numbers do you mean?"

"In the median not-Radch human civilization there are two hundred violent crimes per hundred thousand people. We have forty, on stations, and a hundred ten on planets. About a quarter of those will go to reeducation and violent crimes are ninety-seven percent of crimes that go to reeducation, so that's about thirty people per hundred thousand."

"What nonviolent crimes go to reeducation?"

"Large-scale theft or fraud on a second or third offense, enabling or covering up particularly serious crimes, crimes committed aboard a military vessel in wartime."

"In the cases that imply discretion how's that exercised? You?"

"There are local magistrates but everyone has the right to appeal to me if they'd like."

"I'm tempted to ask if there's transcripts."

"Court proceedings are typically public."

"Appeals to you included?"

"Yes. They're private if anyone involves requests privacy with good reason, but that leaves lots of public ones."

"What counts as a bad reason to request privacy?"

"'I don't want my neighbors to know' doesn't usually count, though 'a witness doesn't want neighbors to know they testified' does."

"Mm. Okay."

"How did your society do this?"

"I think court proceedings are public unless something unusual's going on but I don't know and obviously can't look it up. I had way less leverage at home, there are lots of magical girls and my power theme's nothing to write home about, so I didn't make a point of finding all the things I might have wanted to spend leverage on if I had any, and what I did look into I at the time expected to retain access to writing on." Sigh.