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Miriam in the books is also known for being that weird combination of overt/subtly sensuous in her body and outfits like she’s shown in the series.

Sidenote, she is sleeping with Curtis in the books. I think they kinda infer it in the series but I don’t think it’s like, outright stated.

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Oh, another thing about the resleeving of convicted criminals AND OF PROTECTORAGE SOLDIERS (and victim restitution etc) is that most of the time it’s utterly random and is generally picked from the bottom of the barrel - aka those sleeves that are way less likely to ever be rented out or held in mortgage by family, etc. The soldiers are given a slight preference to the middling level but it’s extremely, extremely rare that a soldier of convict ends up in the same sleeve as when they left for service / were put on ice. Ryker was exceptionally lucky that his sleeve wasn’t being actively used when his terms of service in the Protectorate military was up.

Even those that do end up in their own body often find that body to have been modified or injured in some way that makes it less viable for selling/renting.

Ryker (pretty sure it was Ryker, might’ve been Tak but uhhhhhh I honestly can’t remember now that I think on it) has vivid memories of waiting in the room where all the resleeved convicts are released, holding his mother’s hand and waiting for hours and hours to meet his father on his release day. After all the resleeved convicts etc. had been released, he remembers the warden coming out to explain, and try to comfort, his mother, letting her know that Ryker’s dad had been released that day… he just didn’t come to them, instead, just taking off past them and disappearing into the dank depths of Earth to never be seen or heard from again, at least by them.

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The bill that the protestors are marching against when Takeshi leaves the prison with Ortega is the main propellant of the behind the scenes plotting that takes place for book & season one. Reileen Kawahara is dead set on not letting the bill pass to keep her criminal empire afloat and will do just about anything to see that the bill does not pass.

Also worth noting that Mary Lou was a childhood friend of Ryker, one of the few in his class that seemed to give a damn about him, to the point that her grandmother would often invite Ryker over for dinner and make sure he had whatever clothes she could scrounge and so on. He lost contact with Mary Lou when her grandmother died and she was sent to live with (???? I honestly can’t remember who but it’s not entirely relevant). He learned later on that she’d taken a job as a sex worker and was back in the same general vicinity of him / Bay City but had just never managed the time to go say hello to her again. The news of her death, and the fact that she couldn’t be revived/put in a new sleeve sent him into a sharp spiral as he began to suspect conspiracies everywhere and fell back into old habits of extreme alcohol and drug use. He knew that she was not religious and would never have a ‘do not resleeve’ code on her stack and it was the desperate need to discover what was going on that made him a major target for those involved in trying to keep the bill from passing and led to him being framed for the murders that had him put on ice.

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So I, for one, see a whole lot of flaws with the concept of prison that is used in the book / show, though I do think it was intentionally made to be flawed in the series so that fits.

What isn’t touched on a lot is that when a sleeve of a convicted criminal is put into cold storage loved ones / friends/ family, whoever, has the opportunity to ‘rent’ the sleeve and thereby keeping it on ice so that no one can use it, risking damage or death before the convict’s stack sentence is up. Much like renting a car, etc., or a pay to own deal, if you miss a payment or are late on a payment there is a high chance that you’re out of luck and the sleeve will be put into circulation for renting.

I do believe that the price for renting is based on the severity of the crime as well as a general estimate of what that sleeve would be worth to someone. Ryker, for example, would be on the more expensive side. While he doesn’t have things like ‘gecko hands’ and other things that we see in elite designed sleeves later on, he does have a very physically fit, capable, and attractive body, he has military grade combat wiring, software/hardware in his nervous, musculature and other systems, and has a great deal of actual combat experience so all in all would go for somewhere on the higher end.

Ortega had been paying the mortgage on Ryker’s body, but when Bancroft swept in with his much higher bid / purchase, Ryker was released to him instead, despite the active ‘mortgage’ that Ortega had.

The legality of all of this is never really explained, but this is one of the major flaws that exists in this penal system: as we see a lot in our own current world, if you have enough money, the rules don’t always apply.

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In the books, a microchip / tracking device is implanted by a doctor in residency at the prison’s hospital. She was coerced into doing this by blackmail & a promise of financial reward (without a whole lot of room to say no) & I think she’d done procedures like this before on stacks/sleeves of criminals on loan but I can’t recall exactly.

When Takeshi does find out about the tracker he tracks down the person responsible and confronts her. She shows him how to disable it and regrets having done it in the first place. (I do have an OC, Felicia Adams, who would work well in a swap out for this character btw.)

I believe the order to implant the device came from Kawahara.

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While it’s briefly touched on in the scene with the prison’s warden in the beginning of S1E1, while Takeshi is considered the property of Laurens (this does go for everyone) this does go both ways. Laurens is held responsible for any illegal actions, crimes committed, etc. that Takeshi commits (and is convicted of) while on ‘lease’ to Laurens because he is, in effect, guardian / the responsible party meant to be monitoring and controlling whomever he had on lease.

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Also in the books, while Takeshi isn’t the biggest fans of the elite (Methuselahs et al.) he doesn’t have the hatred of them that he has in the show. They piss him off, he’s grated by the vast dichotomy between the value of life between the Meths and everyone else etc. but it’s not nearly as bad as it’s made out to be in the show.

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Also also, Jaeger was in fact the leader of the group of Envoys (the Praetectorate’s elite forces) which is why he’s always so pissy when he encounters Kovacs because being a traitor to the pack / Protectorate is like the biggest no no that could ever be done in his book.