Accountability Booth

An Accountability Booth is a pod-like structure, normally found on streets in the central administrative and business districts of a bailiwick in the Benacian Union where subjects may, in comparative privacy, pause and enter to give account of themselves to authority. Found within the pod will be a chair, desk, privacy screen and basic network terminal. Accountability Booths are normally used by subjects to conform with the conditions of their parole, for denunciations directed against fellow subjects or public officials, and for routine administrative actions. The booths are also available for those subjects, burdened by guilt, who wish to make a full and free confession of their inharmonious deeds, words, or thoughts.

Monitored continuously by the Commission for the Panopticon, the booths can be remotely locked if appropriate, and an aerosol sedative released for the safety and comfort of the occupant as they await collection by officers from the Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels.

The booths were introduced throughout the Union-State in the years following the end of the Shiro-Benacian War, as widespread demoralisation threatened the tranquility of the Harmonious Society. As a mechanism for the self-reporting of negative attitudes and for alerting authorities to manifestations of defeatism in others, the booths were a modest success in helping to contribute to the maintenance of internal order during the 1730s and 1740s. If nothing else, the rounding up of those subjects who attempted, out of malice or folly, to vandalise the booths, removed many hostile elements from civil society and allowed the Benacian Labour Reserve to maintain appropriate manning levels.