Med-Judge

Med-Judges are Justice Department's paramedic wing, brought in to treat both citizens and Street Judges. They are a part of Med Division.

One of their more distasteful tasks, detailed in the Virgin novel Silencer, is 'taking custody' of potentially mutant fetuses under Section 42(D) of the Genetic Purity Act of 2079.

History

The first colour sighting

The first appearance of a Med Judge is in The Apocalypse War, where a Judge with a red-cross belt is treating a wound on Dredd's arm while they are moving. Later in the same story, Judge Costa - who has two red crosses on non-eagle shoulder pads - is seen treating casualties before being recruited for Dredd's Apocalypse Squad.

The next clear appearance of a Med Judge appears to be in prog 534, where a Judge with red cross shoulder pads is examining one of PJ Maybe's victims and then, later, he and a colleague take the body away. Prog 500 had introduced a "Forensic Squad," but this was a different uniform again.

The first explicit claim there was an entire division of Judge paramedics was in Mega-Special 1989, which placed a Med-Division and Med-Judges (who outrank "civilian med services") as part of the Justice Department rank organization.

Just some of the many Meds

Since then, Med-Judges have been a sporadically occurring presence in strips and are presented as being predominantly non-combatants. An exception was Judge Morinta, who enjoyed modifying weaponry and was first seen participating in a covert raid on a Sov Block gulag. She appeared in several Gordon Rennie stories from 2004-07 and is the only recurring Med-Judge so far.

The novel Judges: What Measure Ye Mete by CE Murphy established that while medical Judges had existed since the 2030s, an official Med Division was part of Solomon's bureaucratic reforms in 2053.

Exactly what a Med-Judge uniform looks like is completely dependent on the artist (and sometimes the individual artists aren't consistent either).

RPGs

All three Dredd roleplaying games - Games Workshop in the 1980s, Mongoose in the 2000s, and EN Publishing in the late 2010s - allow you to create a Med-Judge character. Mongoose/Warlord Gaming's miniatures RPG game included Med-Division figures. As the Games Workshop RPG came out before prog 534, this may be where the concept came from.

Mongoose stated the Med Judges perform civilian/perp medical efforts, staff the Sector Houses, and work on scientific projects. Their first four years on the streets are spent cycling between Sector House duties and med-wagon patrols before they specialise. Med-Judges are trained to be compassionate but soon become hardened to the work. Med Squads use modified Mk III Pat-Wagons as ambulances.

Dredd vs Death

In the Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death video game, Med-Judges will roam parts of certain levels and extra health can be acquired from them. They use the green-and-white uniforms Mark Harrison used in "Conspiracy of Silence", permanently down respirators, and all have the same sardonic male voice ("Try to stay out of trouble", "It's only a flesh wound").

In later levels, Med-Judge corpses may be found, and there can be Med-Judge zombies to be executed.