The Jigsaw Man

In the future, criminals convicted of capital offenses are forced to donate all of their organs to medicine, so that their body parts can be used to save lives and thus repay society for their crimes. However, high demand for organs has inspired lawmakers to lower the bar for execution further and further over time.

The protagonist of the story, certain that he will be convicted of a capital crime, but feeling that the punishment is unfair, escapes from prison and decides to do something really worth dying for. He vandalizes the organ harvesting facility, destroying a large amount of equipment and harvested organs, but when he is recaptured and brought to trial, this crime does not even appear on the charge sheet, as the prosecution is already confident of securing a conviction on his original offense: repeated traffic violations.

Algis Budrys criticized the story's "false basic premise", stating that although Niven implied that the story's premise could occur soon, despite widespread shortages terminally ill people's blood was not being extracted. He concluded that "Niven looks a little ridiculous this time ... [it] is neither good lecture nor good story".[1]

In early 2023, the State of Massachusetts considered a bill to allow Massachusetts prisoners to donate organs and/or bone marrow to hospitals - with some speculation this would encouraged, in exchange to earning time off their sentence.[2][3][4]

• "The Jigsaw Man" title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database