Character Star Trek: Deep Space Nine · 2372

Rinn

Argrathi official who explains O'Brien's sentence

An Argrathi administrator in the episode Hard Time who tells Kira Nerys that Miles O'Brien has already served a twenty-year sentence in the form of implanted memories.

Rinn is an official of the Argrathi, a Gamma Quadrant people, in the fourth-season episode Hard Time. Miles O'Brien had been arrested on their world for asking too many questions about their technology and convicted of espionage before Starfleet could intervene.
When Kira Nerys arrives to collect him, Rinn explains the Argrathi system with some pride. Rather than maintain prisons, they give the offender artificial memories of confinement. O'Brien has lived twenty years in a cell in his own mind during a few hours, and the sentence is complete.
She presents the method as efficient and humane, and tells Kira that the memories cannot be removed. The rest of the episode follows O'Brien's struggle to live with what he remembers, including the death of his cellmate Ee'char.