The better your reputation, the more friendly and helpful behaviour you can expect from other folk and guardsmen; people will talk to you more willingly, be easier to persuade or bribe and will offer you better prices in trades, your reputation will be monitored in the capital. Guardsmen, nobility and even commonfolk or craftsmen will surely spread the word in their community about your good or bad behaviour, some of them possessing the power to call suspicions and the authority to place you as a suspect. Your relations with particular individuals of power is very important, if you do or say something to please or offend a particular person, it may increase or decrease your overall reputation among the people of the capital, either seeing you as scum or a highly respectable individual.
One's reputation falls not only when you commit crimes or other unholy deeds, but also when you intimidate people, refuse orders or lie to them, that is, if you are caught doing so. You can restore your good name depending on the will of the individual by either helping the person in question or someone close to them, by paying generously or selling cheap in trades. If all else fails, hopefully the saying 'time heals all wounds' is as truthful as folks make it seem and people will eventually forget your ill-doings.
All infringements of the law are punished and the severity of the punishment fits the crime. Theft will land you a fine and confiscation of the loot, while a killing will incur a much severer penalty. The nature of the penalties are differentiated and dependent on your crime. If someone sees you committing a crime, but you don’t get caught, you’re still not in the clear if there are witnesses, they will most likely remember you and may cop a hefty price once told of your crime, if you return to the scene of the crime there’s a strong chance the guards will still be on the lookout for you and will continue to pursue you.
Medieval prisons mostly consisted of castle dungeons. Later, different types of strongholds for internment of criminals came into being: municipal jails, located at the town hall, and separate prisons for debtors. Prisons held both men and women together; segregation was practiced solely on the basis of social status and the severity of the crime. Prison was not intended to serve a remedial function, as nowadays, but rather as a temporary residence for the condemned before punishment of another nature, because no one wanted to have to feed prisoners long-term.
Many prisoners who were deemed fit and physically able were temporarily kept as workers in the time being and were chosen to work in the caves or doing other labor for their captor. However, those who were not fit to work were either ransomed, freed or executed depending on the circumstances and severity of their crime. The old and sick eventually led a death of their own if they were not mercily "spared" of it by their captor. The rulers of Flintwhenia have historically deemed a new form of 'exile' in the mines, where prisoners of war, enemies of the state or those who would normally be punished by exile were condemened to live out their days working in the mines.