I’ve said it before but fuck them. They are so fucking cringe. Suddenly you can’t touch them because they are “friendly”.
HoS or Captain are not space law and the law says that punishment for capital crime (which being a traitor is) is
Execution, Permanent Prison Time, Permanent Labor Camp Time, or Cyborgization .
By keeping traitors, lings or anything else alive (or at least free to roam the station) they actively expose crew to danger. They might’ve lied about their objective and they may, at any time, attempt to kill anyone, for any reason.
Also if captain or hos has ordered you to keep this (confirmed) traitor/ling/antag/whatever alive they are actively commiting dereliction of duty and should be arrested.
Alright, lets have a look at the law book and see how things should be.
According to the wiki, space law requires all enemies of the corporation face permanent imprisonment since it’s a capital crime, with execution being for antags that prove to be too dangerous to contain, are un-containable due to powers they may have, or if otherwise authorized by the captain. The exception to this being antags that can be de-converted such as cultists, in which case they are to be de-converted and released. If the captain is unable or unwilling to athorize an execution, then a trial must be held to decide on the final punishment. Space law does allow for lethal force against enemies that are armed and dangerous, but it’s still preferable to keep them alive if possible. So in essence, try to capture alive, use lethal force if they’re dangerous, give permanent imprisonment, execute only if they’re too dangerous to contain/un-containable.
Now for ‘friendly’ antags. According to the wiki, there’s not space law procedure for paroling anyone, so I assume that they must serve their punishment. The captain doesn’t have to authorize an execution, but he doesn’t have the authority to pardon an enemy of the corporation. If anyone willingly fails to properly imprison an enemy of the corporation, they could face Aiding and Abetting charges, which considering they’re helping an enemy of the corporation, is a capital crime.
So next time you’re on the server and you hear word that security or command is letting a known criminal walk, and have proof that the person is an Enemy of the Corporation, you got yourself a court case that you have a very strong chance of winning.
On MRP you are required to follow space law and enforce it as security, so technically you should have to punish them under the ‘enemy of the corp’ section, however realistically we aren’t really going to ban people for letting other people have fun their way when it isn’t actually harming anyone, unless its a case where the traitor very obviously isn’t friendly and the security is just straight up corrupt.