> So in this fictional universe, has the legal system regressed to the point where kidnapping someone for (presumably) decades is no longer a crime with a life sentence?

Vinge posits a technology that is used for good and bad purposes. One of the protagonists is a cop who is bobbled by a criminal and emerges in the distant future, when the Earth is essentially uninhabited except for a handful of humans who have been bobbled (electively or not).