Stopping contraband.

[EssBee]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on stopping contraband issues.

I've recently started a new female only prison with only min and med sec prisoners being taken.
I have only one entrance to the prison which has a gate at each end and a metal detector, and a gate mid-way between the inner and outer gates acting as a stop point for anyone who may be trying to get in/out with contraband detected by the metal detectors. There's also a dog handler in between them too so on one can get in or out without being scanned by the detectors or sniffed by the dogs.
There is no other access to the outdoors besides the aforementioned entry/exit point.

The yard is right smack bang in the middle of the prison so nothing can be thrown over the walls. Also the entire site is walled in, so in theory nothing should be able to be thrown in anyway.

All cell blocks have metal detectors and dogs posted at their entry/exit point, and each block only has one way in/out, so no one can sneak past these defences.
Each corridor/passage way also has detectors and dogs in them, as does the entrance to the kitchen, the workshop, library, shop, and other places like that where contraband could be smuggled in or out.
I also have dogs posted constantly in the canteens, and workshop etc too.

I've banned all prisoners from now working anywhere too, and also started doing cell, tunnel, contraband, shakedowns everyday at least once in an attempt to curb the continuous 'Contraband is out of control' messages, but still the problem persists.

Even going in to lockdown for a couple of days at a time doesn't stop the problem.
Surely if they cant get out of their cells and have guards, dogs, and detectors posted at every corridor or entry/exit point from the cells, then surely nothing should be getting in or out, right?

I'm at a total loss as to what else I can try and do to cure the problem now, so if anyone has any tips then I'd love to hear them.

Thanks in advance.

[Kunovega]

You will never stop all contraband, just like real prisons, they always find a way.

Metal detectors have a built in failure rate to simulate prisoners sneaking things past them. Dogs have a built in failure rate to simulate variables and ways to hide contraband. Staff smuggle things in or things come in through kitchen deliveries, or visitors drop off packages to be picked up later and so on.

Thrown contraband is the only kind that can be stopped completely, with a 10 space buffer (wall, 10 spaces, wall, 12 spaces total, 2 walls with 10 spaces in between and the area in between being staff only and the entrances to it being guarded or patrolled or prisoners can still sneak into staff only areas)

Beyond that, if prisoners can get to staff rooms, classrooms or anything with a desk, or the cleaning cupboard or the kitchen or anywhere they can work, there's contraband they can steal or that's been imported to there from supplies for them to pick up.

You should have a dog patrolling your delivery area. Metal detectors at the entrance and at junction points and especially between the prison and visitation areas and cameras in all rooms where prisoners can be assigned to work, and phone taps on the phones (this prevents some, not all phone ordered deliveries)

And you're still not going to stop it all, prisoners and visitors can come into your prison with things shoved up their own ass and things can be in deliveries that simply don't get found.

In real life the majority of contraband is brought in by corrupt staff, the game simulates this more by having all the other contraband origins have imperfect detection methods so you just can't stop it all and can't ever know if your staff is involved. You're in the dark, just like real prisons.

Shakedowns in real life are usually done randomly but a minimum of every 30 days, sometimes more often. In game you should probably expect to do one at least every 7 days or so.

[Sillls]

What about visitors? That is were I find a lot of contraband.
Also I find that searching supply's taken in everyday is a good idea. I sometimes have to order searches in food prep areas still.
Mail is also something that needs to be searched.
Also the guard may fail at finding the contraband as well.
Prisoners like to go near the walls, if they can do that, they can still pick stuff up.

Anyway where there is access, you may also have contraband.
I do a shakedown every night but even then I feel like I have just been to the hardware store and pharmacy. Also min suc are like gofors

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

The 'intelligence' tab will show you where contraband comes from, that's a solid starting point

You can never stop it completely, but you can increase the chances of discovering it before it gets into the hands of prisoners with several layers of doges and metal detectors at your prison entry points.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Visitor contraband can be cut off by replacing those tables with visitor screens, no?

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

One thing I've noticed is that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 'contraband is out of control' message doesn't correlate to actual contraband activity. It just seems to pop up randomly. Your intelligence tab will tell you how much contraband is actually in circulation

[EssBee]

Thanks for all of the replies.

I found out a ton of stuff was coming from the gym, but in all the time I had it I never once saw anyone use it! :D
It's gone now though and that helped bring the levels down a bit, but it just moved the problems elsewhere instead.

I know I'm never going to stop all of it, but it just seems kinda strange that so much was getting in even with all of the security in place.

As for visitation and phone taps etc, visitation had booths which were all tapped, and there was a detector on both prisoner and visitor entrances, as well as dogs stationed there too.
All other phones throughout entire the prison were tapped too.

I had also stopped all prisoners from working anywhere too, so that should have ruled that out as a possibility for the most part.

As for the spacing around walls, I guess I just assumed that if you built a wall then it would automatically have a roof too. Never expected it to all be open air. :D
Live and learn.

So essentially, apart from the spacing around walls, I seem to have had everything else covered that was mentioned.

I've never had it this bad in any other prisons I've played even thought they all follow roughly the same layout. I guess I just got unlucky with this one.

Nevermind. I'll just plod along and accept that it's gonna happen no matter what I do.

Thanks for all of the tips anyway.

[bongerman85]

lots of metal detectors and lots of dogs... as was said before its impossible to stop everything. i dont know if they ever fixed this particular issue but, if incoming deliveries pass by a visitation room, contact or non contact type. then any contraband can magically transfer to any prisoners in that room, it think its within like 4 or 6 squares or something. also it is possible that you have contraband that is slipping in through delieveries.

anyway beyond this i noticed a new contraband type when playing last night that i hadnt seen before. homemade contraband. its homemade booze and homemade drugs now i think.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Wow, thanks man, did not know that visitation rooms behaved like that

[The Queen Salis]

There are "magical" prisoner reputations - Connected and Pickpocket.
They just conjure contraband out of thin air.

Pickpocket creates absurd amounts of staff keys when any guard is near them. (Because every guard carries 10 copies of their keyring and does not notice them all being stolen)
They then sell the keys to everyone they meet, of course, and use them to get out of their cell as they please.

Connected just magics all other mild contraband items into existence at regular intervals. Substances, tools, weak weapons, everything but heavy guns I think.
They also sell them to everybody they meet, obviously.

These 2 reputations need to be completely isolated from any bigger populations if you want peace.

[EssBee]

Originally posted by The Queen Salis:

There are "magical" prisoner reputations - Connected and Pickpocket.
They just conjure contraband out of thin air.

Pickpocket creates absurd amounts of staff keys when any guard is near them. (Because every guard carries 10 copies of their keyring and does not notice them all being stolen)
They then sell the keys to everyone they meet, of course, and use them to get out of their cell as they please.

Connected just magics all other mild contraband items into existence at regular intervals. Substances, tools, weak weapons, everything but heavy guns I think.
They also sell them to everybody they meet, obviously.

These 2 reputations need to be completely isolated from any bigger populations if you want peace.

Wow. I had no idea the game did things like this.
I'll definitely keep a look out for those reputations. Can't say I've seen them to date, but definitely worth noting.

Thanks for the top tips.

[EssBee]

Also, @bongerman85

Another top tip there.

Although my visitation room is reasonably near the entrance to the prison, it's still far enough away to qualify as being too far away for incoming deliveries to get to it.

Once entering the prison the deliveries turn immediately left, visitors turn immediately right, and for anything else you go straight on and in to the main prison.

I guess the only other possibility with this kind of thing happening is if visitors and deliveries meet in the entrance checkpoints at the same time.

I guess I could test this theory by making a separate entrance for deliveries that goes straight in to the delivery area. That way the two shouldn't cross.
Well, unless visitors turn up while delivery trucks are parked outside, but there nothing we can do in that situation anyway.


Mind you, it's going to take a while to purge everything again now.
I kinda got bored and opened the prison up to legendary and death row prisoners.
Death and bloodshed is now a daily ritual. :D

[The Queen Salis]

Originally posted by EssBee:

Originally posted by The Queen Salis:

There are "magical" prisoner reputations - Connected and Pickpocket.
They just conjure contraband out of thin air.

Pickpocket creates absurd amounts of staff keys when any guard is near them. (Because every guard carries 10 copies of their keyring and does not notice them all being stolen)
They then sell the keys to everyone they meet, of course, and use them to get out of their cell as they please.

Connected just magics all other mild contraband items into existence at regular intervals. Substances, tools, weak weapons, everything but heavy guns I think.
They also sell them to everybody they meet, obviously.

These 2 reputations need to be completely isolated from any bigger populations if you want peace.

Wow. I had no idea the game did things like this.
I'll definitely keep a look out for those reputations. Can't say I've seen them to date, but definitely worth noting.

Thanks for the top tips.

on a loosely related note, reputations i also tend to isolate from bigger populations are "volatile" and "instigator", and if someone has a combo of both, they just go into endless handcuffs.
"volatile" will randomly go off without any valid reason, even if my prison is very good,
"instigator" provokes nearby prisoners into rebeling even if they otherwise wouldn't.
"volatile instigator" in gen pop is a riot wating to happen.

[EssBee]

Yeah, I've got a few volatile in there. Possibly some Instigator too if I recall correctly.
Still, my policy is set pretty strictly with regards to being upgraded to a higher security grade so if they reach SuperMax they're on permanent lockdown in their cells with no visitation or mail or any other rights, regardless.
They can kick off all they like in their own cells while in SuperMax. They're likely get shot by the armed guard that's stationed there if they push their luck. One less problem for me to deal with. :D

[bongerman85]

its a fair assumption at this point to realize that no, we can't stop all of the contraband. and in my experiences aside from using mods to overhaul the metal detector there is a mutator for that now too... but i realized that pulling all of the contraband from prisoners will cause the heat in the prison to rise too... and all of this backbreaking rigid everything to stop contraband, its really not worth it. metal detectors, dogs and periodic zone shakedowns are really the best way to catch most of it. and in the end that is usually enough. remember that this is a prison simulator, not a resort management simulator. you are going to have incidents. i have armed security guards in my prison with ar-15s and people still die. also i am not giving up my workshops and work programs, they really do save my prison a lot of money as well as generating massive cash flow.

[Playzr 🐵]

Your current measures sound very effective and reasonable, but the game likes to ignore these things in favour of uncontrollable chaos. Unless you consider doing this...
One effective solution is to make mini individual prisoner prisons so they go in they don't come out, so nothing can be smuggled in or out. You may still get the contraband warning as staff find contraband outside of these areas, but it never goes into the cells. It's a bit expensive and it deprives your prisoners of things like education and work, but there are no prisoner deaths. There might still be staff deaths as any violent prisoners smash up their rooms and any staff that come to repair them. Put a camera in their cell and it'll be a guard. Give them tasers and it'll increase their odds. If you're really intent on making this work tick the option that makes the prisoners non-violent. I like to tick the option to make the metal detectors more powerful.
But then again that is a very specific type of prison that you'll probably have to fund with a big forestry area since there's a large area and several staff per prisoner which wouldn't work in real life I suppose.
An individual isolated prison consists of a cell, a yard and a canteen. The yard is optional but probably a good idea since many other amenities won't be available. You could even give them their own laundry to work in but it doesn't work very well and you're better off with a janitor doing that for several cells. Then you need a kitchen to serve several of the canteens. I would suggest also adding an "air lock" staff area to the entrance because if you're expanding your prison it might make the hallway shared so they will wander out and cause trouble.
It's a very specific type of prison but at least it stops prisoners knifing snitches in the canteen on a regular basis.