Rejuve culture

The following section is combination transcript from Lurking Dragon's Writers Guide and describes the effects of rejuve technology on the body and mind.

Rejuvination
The advent and sudden appearance of Rejuve technology while a major boon in terms of healing, extending life and changing the way society operated as a whole came with a number of drawbacks or social side-effects that had been unforeseen at the time.

During the early days soon after the discovery of Rejuvenation Technology rejuves were originally treated as adults, even though they were in children's bodies. This turned out to be a mistake. Many of the early rejuves got into trouble and stayed there. They were unprepared for the emotional roller coaster of adolescence, and had none of the necessary support, guidance and discipline they needed. Additionally there came about another concern, how to identify rejuvenated children from normal children. Surprisingly easy to fix it became common practice to mark all children born and rejuved with a mark stating exactly why they are a child. This became necessary as, even though birth control was becoming implemented through the newly developed Kensington treatment to reduce the risk of overcrowding were still being born and society was beginning to understand that not all children were the same.

Even different classes of rejuves were different from one another, however one thing was apparent. All rejuves were in essence children and needed to be treated as such.

Does a Rejuve have an adult mind
After many cases of rejuves going by the way-side it was determined that both judgement and emotional maturity of the rejuve are at least partially derived from the physical body. Put bluntly a rejuve may have all the memories of being an adult, but the actual brain structure and brain chemistry is that of a child's, giving rejuves all the judgement and emotional needs and reactions of a child their physical age.

Whle easy to say in theory it is often difficult to compare in practice. During rejuvenation the act of maintaining or transferring the memories of the adult individual into a child's body is not perfect. First and foremost the largest part of the human mind in terms of storage is the section used for muscle memory. This means that a freshly rejuved child often looses a lot of their physical skills. For rejuves down to a young age even the simple act of walking or holding their bowels can be a challenge with the control needed for these functions having to be relearned. Thing such as writing, riding a bike, swimming and other fine motor control are often also lost which means a large majority of rejuves require re-training, physical therapy and just good old fashion play time.

Similarly, while a rejuve may remember events from their past life, or remember how to perform cognitive skills such as maths, planning, infrastructure and such some components can be lost in the reshuffle of rejuvenation.

The easiest way to think of a rejuve is as a child with the memories of an adult. And while having the memories of an adult means they know more than a child, and especially means they know right from wrong they can't always be trusted to think the way an adult should or be made to have the same level of responsibility as an adult.

Crime and Punishment
There has always been crime. It has never been solved--no matter how terrible the punishment, there are always those who think they won't get caught. But people were tired of locking criminals away in prisons that only made them better criminals. But what is a prison, but a restriction of freedom. Why is it so harsh? because it is hard to control adults without violence. Psychologists had had more and more luck with something called regression therapy, which basically took a person back to their childhood and re- socialized them. And with rejuvenation, you could really take someone back to childhood. People wanted a system of punishing and reforming criminals that would work, but that was simultaneously more humane and yet more harsh than the old system. The uniting of these factors resulted in the current criminal justice system.

A criminal would be tried and convicted as usual, but instead of a prison term, he or she would be sentenced to one or more cycles of childhood. By cycles this as defined as a number of years of childhood, starting at one age and finishing at another, repeated for a given number of times. An example of this would be a sentence of 6 cycles of ages 5 to 9, making for a sentence of 30 years. While the creation of these sentences were still in essence based on years, the act of making the penitent (criminal) live out this sentence in their childhood meant three things.


 * 1) That it was easier to control and discipline the criminal.
 * 2) That the criminal could spend a portion of the time trying to better themselves through study
 * 3) That by the rejuve penny would be given a chance to break from the old life, the one that had led to crime and make a fresh start.

Central to these three fundamentals were that Rejuvenation Only Replaced Jail Sentences, which meant the majority of times the people being sentenced were deemed to need a new life. Also fundamental to this was the idea that, as the criminals were now children they should be looked after by qualified parents who were experienced in spanking, disciplining and controlling children even should they be hard cases.