[Chaos]

Jail Time

The 'jail' was meant to get expansions to fill out the activities i planned for it, but it's something I never really got around to, and from the looks of everyone who simply logs out of jail, there's not much reason to really add them in at this time. So far, I've been silently trying to iron out something to replace this. We could just go over to 'shorter jail times' but that means more character-inflicted punishments, as the OP noted. It's not me trying to ruin your characters; but if a character is going around committing serious crimes and gets caught, they should be dealt with just as seriously, not just a few days in jail.

PC Guards must witness crimes

Except that this puts incredibly undue stress on Guard players to form an airtight patrol schedule, which comes into conflict with a few things I'll be noting later in this post. Also, there are far more people in this world than the PCs could even hope to represent; I would not put the burden of witness on a group of Guard Characters that couldn't hope to match the population of the entire guard force.

Also, before someone inevitably brings these up:

PC Guard Presence

I can agree that as of late, the amount of PC Guards on patrol are disappointingly low. I will be sifting through the guard and potentially opening another round of applications once I get the time for it, but please bear the following in mind:

1. People have lives. They are not surefire guaranteed to be around every day, nor are they contractually obligated to play SL2 for a good chunk of their waking hours.
2. The Guard Players are just as human as you are. From some of the guard-bashing I've seen, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a few guards got discouraged and lost their motivation.

If either of these factors keep getting in the way of whomever I bring into the Guard, there's not much else I can do. I could go on about this, but honestly, if you couldn't imagine yourself regularly patrolling with your schedule, I don't think it's a stretch to step back and give the guards a bit of breathing room.

'Guards are omnipresent'

....I'm not sure who's claiming this, but that's completely incorrect. NPC Guards can be expected in the more popular of public areas, as well as popular junctions during prime hours. (that can include things like guild/company events/parties, if they so wish) Places like the wilderness, behind houses, alleyways, (most) sewers, etc. are not somewhere you can claim NPC guards to be, unless you have very good reason to say 'my character got this guard to follow him and check this out'.

If your idea of making things happen is just running up and causing mayhem in plain view of popular areas, then I'm sorry, but the guard is going to notice it one way or another. If you're looking to avoid the attention of law enforcement, then it's best to do your thing where they wouldn't normally look.