Marks of Cain, or 24/7 Purge for personae non grata

[Electric Bone Flute]

Imagine marks that can be indelibly branded on you and “shine” through whatever you cover it with. These marks remain on a corpse until the flesh beneath it has rotted away. If certain actions are done to someone bearing such a mark, it shows up on their knuckles. Now we have IDing and forensics out of the way. Let’s ignore any benign use of this and go onto what I want to go with: the realistic consequences of a judicial punishment.
In the Kingdom of Sliss, there are various punishments meted out to criminals and people mistaken for criminals. Public beatings for stealing bread, beheadings for kicking the king in the jaw, loss of toes for accounting fraud, and the like. However, there are many people in this kingdom, and sometimes not enough people to carry out punishments. What are we to do? Simple: deputize the citizenry into carrying out the more interesting punishments. Do they have the blue mark? If you see them in the street, you may beat them. The yellow mark? The courts will be deaf to any fraud claims. Orange? You may “steal” from them; it’s not their property. Red? Oh boy... all crime is legal. Of course, you can’t commit a crime while doing an otherwise-criminal-but-legal-against-that-person-action, like setting their house on fire (which could contain other people, or burn other houses). Also, what is wrong with “you”? Seriously, not everyone is going to want to do terrible things to a person just because it’s legal. It’s legal to put a fruit basket on your head and run through the markets so long as you’re not ramming into people, but why? The list of colors isn’t exhaustive, by the way.
Now, what’s the consequence of such a law combined with these “Cain” marks? Some things I foresee, and please add your own:

• Protection rackets for anyone bearing these marks, especially the permanent ones
• Nobles being disgraced for receiving these marks, if they ever get them at all

 

[WooHooMan]

How do people get the marks on them in the first place?

 

[Electric Bone Flute]

They are placed on you by a secretive method only available to lords, sanctioned watchmen, et al; law enforcement. The placement/removal process is such that if you yourself are not one of these people, the knowledge will wipe itself from your mind.
(Note that I’m trying to make a black box that’s essentially a fantasy proxy for authentication, and this is essentially fantasy encryption work applied to criminal identities).

 

[WooHooMan]

If I were someone with a lot of power or money and I received a mark - let’s say a red one - but I believed that a yellow or blue one (or no Mark at all) was more fitting for the crime I committed, would there be a legal process to get the mark changed or removed?
If this policy was enacted, may first concern would be the possibilities of lords misusing it against people they don’t like by putting marks on people who have only committed petty crimes or misdemeanors.

Also, wouldn’t it be in the benefit of someone with a red mark to just up and leave the kingdom as it’s highly unlikely they could ever leave a peaceful life there.

 

[Electric Bone Flute]

Ah, it would seem an exile would ensue for some people. Especially if the mark is only recognized as “legal tender” in that realm.
I thought that “novel justice system being abused” was too obvious a consequence to state, so I didn’t.

 

[Prince of Spires]

To me "a secretive method" is at odds with "available to lords, sanctioned watchmen, et al; law enforcement". With that many people knowing the method, it's not likely to stay secret for long. Or, for some of those people to figure out a way to profit from it.

It's the fantasy equivalent of declaring someone an outlaw. I think what you would see is that you'd get three categories of people:
- There are those rich enough to get rid of the mark using a lord or watchman looking for an easy profit.
- There are those too poor for this. They would most likely flee to a place where the marks would be ignored. Especially for permanent ones. After all, laws are a local thing. If the next town over ignores the marks then they would just receive those people without issue. After all, unless it's some devine, universal thing, then these would simply become people with some weird glowing thing on their body (who migh be handy to have around if you want to read at night).
- There are those powerful enough to not care about it. In history, several figures have been outlawed. For instance, the leader of the Dutch rebellion against spain, William of Orange, was outlawed in 1580. However, by this point, the Netherlands was already partially independent and the king of Spain's edict wsa mainly ignored. It should be noted that William was actually assassinated, with his killer hoping for the reward that came with being made an outlaw. He never received the reward, since he was put on trial and put to death because the Netherlands disagreed with William being an outlaw.

This last category would be high ranking people, especially those with international interests or close to borders. For instance, a border baron who receives such a mark would just turn to the neighbouring country and join them in exchange for a pardon. A powerful duke would increase his standing army and dare anyone to actually come and try something. And a rich, international merchant would perhaps simply stop sending food to a particular city or country, disrupting the food supplies, which leads to hunger and unrest.

 

[Mad Swede]

Implicit in what you've written is that there is no possibility of redemption for those convicted of a crime. That doesn't give the convicted person much of an incentive to reform, in fact it could have the opposite effect. If you've got nothing more to lose what's to stop you killing anyone you meet for whatever they've got? And what happens to those who are wrongly convicted?

 

[ThinkerX]

end result would be either a mass exodus or a revolution