The problem is mostly in liberty - I have a liberty pirate chara and I literally ether have to start shooting fairly quickly or 2 battleships and 3/4 fighters show up and all take as little time as they can killing me. I tried 5 times in separate encounters on different days with diffrent players to surrender and before I could do a single thing I got ganked. Its got to the point where if I am in any chara that could be considered not fully lawful I generally stay well out of liberty since I have been ganked for every reason under the sun - even for trying to rp the character I was flying. The rare occasion I get decent rp is the odd one out.
Edit: A memorable occasion was a LPI player who killed my council trader for being a gallic ship despite my assurances that the council were fighting Gallia.