My first prison

A walk-through from start to finish of setting up a game and building prison using all base game (+ the 2 free DLC) features.

Introduction

My standard webcrawler disclaimer: If you are reading this anywhere other than on Steam, it has been reproduced without my permission and quite possibly is not up to date.

There really isn't any up to date walk-through and I struggled early on myself having hours of frustration and restarts, because if you don't have a plan you are going to be constantly demolishing and having prisoners escape and be angry and hate the game and life in general.

I cobbled a lot of info together from a few out of date but otherwise good guides. Since I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel, I freely admit ripping off other guides (I believe in credit where credit is due). I hope I have improved on anything I have taken. All that being said, I did not rip off anything wholesale in here, None of the other guides were walk-through as such. I rewrote everything in my own style and this guide was several long and stressful days of work on my part. In fact had I known how much effort it was going to be beforehand, I might not have bothered.

I assume the reader has a basic knowledge of the game. I am not really going to cover the UI and the like. As the campaign is actually the basic tutorial, I would recommend doing at least the first few missions. My tutorial will work more or less for "Bootstraps" (the final mission). Move any coordinates I give 10 tiles to the right because the map is bigger and bear in mind some of the research is done for you and the rest have shorter than normal times.

So I've got quite a few more hours under my belt than Steam says, but I am not an expert on this game by any means. I've also got varying degrees of familiarity with all of the DLC, but I generally do not recommend them or play with them and this guide will not cover their use or content, other than the odd general observation.

Like and favorite and all that. Leave comments and suggestions if you've got 'em.

Game settings

Create new prison. I expect you to follow the settings I give unless I specify that you can choose. If you don't, then don't cry to me that my guide sucks and I don't know what I'm talking about. I am not going to cover the DLC and you will really have a bad time with it if you don't build your prison accordingly for the DLC you are using. You have been warned!

Base Settings
Stick with male, as female prisoners bring their own challenges and I am not covering them in this guide. Choose whatever uniforms suit you. Dogs as well. For the warden I strongly recommend "The Lobbyist" for this walk-through, otherwise "Dylan Cook" is my usual preference (because after salaries, food and programs are your biggest expenses).

World Size "Small" - Your next game you can use whatever settings you like, but for the purposes of this guide, use small.

Funds "$30k" - Same as above. You should at least learn how to manage your money before you decide you want to just play easy mode. I'm not judging you, really. (Ok, I'm judging you.)

Plot Type "Default" - Honestly whatever you prefer here.

Weather & Intensity "Legacy" - Either legacy (recommended for flavor) or disabled (if you don't want to see it/are running on a potato). Perfect Storm owners, do not choose low/medium/high.

Starting Season "Spring" - Whatever you like since legacy weather is just for flavor, we aren't enabling temperature or Perfect Storm events (if you own PS).

Gangs "Legacy" - Again I recommend legacy but disabled is ok (if you own the DLC do not choose low/medium/high for this walk-through)

Dynamic Reputations "Disabled" - For the love of all that is unholy, leave it disabled! One legendary prisoner is more than enough to give you a bad day, and if you are unlucky you will get one early, even with this setting disabled. There is a reason even after you save your preferences this will still default to disabled. Just leave it alone!

Fog of War "Check" - I will be covering the use of the CCTV and this way you will know early on if you hate it and don't ever want to play with it again but at least you can make an informed decision.

Failure Conditions "Check" - I won't let you fail (probably, maybe), stop being a candy ass and turn it on.

Generate forests "Un-check" - Random trees, they have to be cut down if you want to build where they are, although the logs can be sold. They are going to slow you down if they are where you want to build, and don't bring in enough money to be worth the time wasted in the early game. Later you can plant your own trees for big bucks making wood (He said wood. Uh huhuh...wood)

Generate Lakes "Un-check" - Even more of a problem than forests.

Generate Buildings "Un-check" - More of the same. Just useless crap to cleanup.

Warden Mode "Un-check" - We are not even going to discuss it. Just leave the #@*% box un-checked.

Events "Un-check" - I usually play with this enabled since they add some flavor to the game but they are pretty much always bad things and so will not help us with our walk-through.

Temperature "Un-check" - Brings it's own headaches but really doesn't add any value to the game.

Staff Needs "Un-check" - Ditto the above. Ok, you can lower staff salaries with this on, but then they can also demand raises and go on strike (although you can cheese them).

Escape Plans "Un-check" - Unless you want them climbing over the walls constantly, leave it off. It brings extra challenge, but really is just a #@*% hassle. I usually play with this (as well as temperature and staff needs) enabled anyway, but I've got some experience with the game and build accordingly. This tutorial is already way too long.

Obviously leave the cheats un-checked as well. Cheating our way through is not going to help us learn to play. You neckbeards can play creative mode on your own time.

DLC Settings
I do actually recommend the free DLC since they actually contain useful features.
We will be making use of them so enable them both. I don't know if you need to turn aging on for the reporting stuff, which we do want, but it seems benign and adds some flavor.

If you are like me and didn't buy any Paradox trash high quality DLC then everything will be greyed out like my screen. Otherwise be sure all your other DLC settings are "Disabled/Default".

Now click on "Play". Immediately hit "Space" to pause the game.

Accept the Administration Centre (Brits and their wierd-ass spelling, lern #@*% 'Murican, mkay?) and Basic Detention Centre grants. Most of the other tabs are not available to us right now.

Go ahead and set intake to "Total Prisoners" and "50" otherwise we will forget later. Also set arrival time to midnight (that's 00:00) don't worry we will be ready.

I'm going to warn you now that I am an old windbag who tends to go on at length.

Basics: Offices & Staff-room

So let's get to work. Go into options>game and look for Plot Grid/Coordinates, set to "both enabled". Then pause the game again because it is asinine and will unpause when you exit the menu.

We're going to go and shave the bottom row of the Deliveries room off, so it is 5x8. We're going to do the same thing to the Garbage. And then we're going to lay out an 5x8 Exports 2 blocks below the Garbage, at (84,59). We do this to have some easy reference points and also because trucks are 10 tiles long and we want to control how they queue up once we put road gates in.

Use the Quick build and place an office at (75,41), rotate the door so it faces the road. Stick with brick or concrete since other materials are more expensive. Turn off "auto lights" and place your own. At (74,51) drag out a 6x5 Storage room. Place the power station at (57,38) and the water pump at (57,42). Hire the Warden. Then wait for the office to get built. What? Nothing is happening? Un-pause the game dumbass. I will not tell you anymore when to pause or un-pause so do it as needed.

We can turn the plot grid and coordinates off at this point since we've got our frame of reference. Once the 1st office is done, place the 2nd office overlapping the walls in between them as shown and then go into the Bureaucracy menu and start researching "Finance". Once finance finishes researching hire the Accountant and research both "Extra grants" and "Security". That finishes the admin center, take "Long-term investment" next. Of note with grants there is a bug that causes the last one to get dropped usually and you will get paid again, except with the investments you have to pay. So that is why we want to knock that out ASAP because it takes a lot of ingame time. Try not to reload while it is active.

Hire about 8 more workmen. Plan out and then build an office-sized staff-room next to the Warden's office. Use the staff door. Put a drink machine and a wide sofa or two in it. Continue placing offices one by one until we've got 5 total. Put a wide sofa in the top left office as well (it will be for the shrink).

When security is finished(should be around 2300), hire the Chief and research "Maintenance", "Deployment" & "Tax Relief". With the extra grant, go ahead and take "Staff Well-being Initiative".

Lay out a 6x9 (that is internal dimensions, so 8x11 walls) holding cell with the planning tool, use a large jail door. Sell that old capacitor and put a new capacitor max plus between the station and pump. Keep an eye on the warnings for when your power station is overloaded since you'll need to add more caps as the prison grows.

When done, it should look like this:

Basics: Holding Cell

Once your offices & staff-room are done, go ahead and commit the build for the holding cell. Put in electrical and plumbing as well.

While that is going let's get planning on kitchen (6x5) & canteen (15x5). Remember these are internal dimensions. Staff doors for the kitchen, large jail doors for the canteen. We're also going to make a little fenced in compound out of it, so that our inmates will be able to go to the canteen to eat.

Also fence in storage since it is a source of contraband. Staff only gates, 2 left, 2 right, 1 for storage.

Let everything else build and place your furniture before you lay out the utilities for the kitchen; you want the holding cell done first. Place 2 toilets, 2 benches and 4-8 beds (we don't need a bed for everyone in there but we'll move some of them to cells when we build them anyway; we waste nothing). Temporarily we'll throw down 2 shower heads with drains under them. Don't forget to designate the holding cell room!

When all that is done we can commit to the kitchen/canteen/compound.

Basics: Kitchen & Canteen

This stuff is still going to be building for a while now. It's ok. As long as we get these all done before mealtime we're fine. Just after midnight (to save a days salaries) go ahead and hire 5 guards and 2 cooks. That will finish a grant and we will replace it with "Short-term investment". The cell is going to flash a warning about no canteen but the guards will start moving the prisoners in. Oh, we should get metal detectors by the front door before we forget. Let's also update the regime. See the image to the right.

When the kitchen walls & floor are in, layout the room and place 4 cookers, 2 fridges, 2 sinks, 1 recycling bin as shown. Do a couple lights and a fire sprinkler. Add plumbing and electric.
When the canteen foundations ready, place 5 tables, 10 benches, a serving table, bin, some lights.

If you go check out the most excellent utility
Prison Architect Calculator(V3.0) (shameless self-plug), you will see we fall a little short, but it's ok. Not everyone will be eating at once and it'll also be a minute before we hit 50 inmates. Keep calm and carry on! Do add another cook every 10 inmates or so, you'll want 6 when we get this place fully built. Notice that now that we fenced in the area the warnings have gone out and we are ready for chowtime 10 hours from now.

Basics: Yard

Next we need to give them something to do. It isn't enough to just place a yard, we need to fence it in and for it to be accessible still. So let's do that.

Drag out a 12x9 yard from (36,47) and then build a fence around it. Use the fence with grass, we'll make it look pretty. Don't forget some staff gates.

We'll add some gym activity stuff and phones to the yard so the inmates can fulfill some needs.

Build a little running track from flooring, make the rest grass, except the path on top and bottom out of paving stone.

Also let's run a paving stone path all the way back to the entrance; it will really speed people along.

Basics: Shower & Solitary

Finally we will plan out the shower and get the Basic Detention Center('murican! :P) grant finished. We should be starting this section around 0600 and finishing around 1200 so here are your next research assignments:

Hire the Foreman when maintenance finishes. Your next research is "Patrols", "Prison Labour" & "Psychology" (about 0600). After those are done hire the Psychologist and do "Cleaning", "Dogs" & "Micromanagement" (about 1200, these all take the same 6 hours and as each admin can do his own research simultaneously they should finish around the same time. Tax Relief is going to be a while, since it takes 48hr).

From (20,46) drag out walls & foundation. We're going to make 3 solitary confinement cells too. I find I tend to need them sooner rather than later, not to mention they are the right edge of the shower room.

In max or supermax wings I would use the secure doors but this is mostly med & low and it is good to check on them once in a while anyway, so the regular solitary door is fine. They are 100 bucks cheaper besides. Place showers and drains as shown.

The grant should finish as soon as the 1st shower head goes in.

While 1 of the guides I linked (the PDF) strongly recommends just stacking shower and drain on top of toilet in cell, and it works a treat - it is a bit cheesy, looks ugly and besides what's a prison without shower room rape and murder? We can't have that with no shower room. Don't drop the soap!


Generally, this really isn't enough solitary cells. 1 per 10 is a good rule of thumb. You can cram them in wherever since they are so small.

Deployment

Go ahead and take "Security Procedure Certification" grant and hire 5 more guards. Make a little patrol route somewhere(I will cover patrols more later) and assign 3 guards to it.

So let's take a look at available grants now. Other than the "Reform through Education Initiative" these can all be knocked out very quickly when we are ready. We aren't ready though. While we are going to work on the requirements for "Cellblock A" right now, "Prison Maintenance" will probably be the next thing we can complete. So hold off on taking a 3rd grant, but don't forget about them.

Around 1800 we should be ready to start "Prison Policy", "Armoury" and "Grounds Keeping" research.

Since we've got Deployment done we can also go ahead and make all but the shrinks(Psychologist) office staff only. Do the storage room as well since it is a source of contraband.

Since we have Micro-management as well, we can now set our deployment schedule around the regime. Sleep/shower are dark blue, work/free-time are red and meals are green. This gives us enough flexibility to deploy guards where needed most when needed most without being too burdensome. I think the screenshot says it all really. Git'er dun!

Let's deploy some guards too. Assign 2 guards to the holding cell at night, 2 to the canteen during meals, 1 to the kitchen during work and meals and also the 2 cooks. Assign 2 guards to the yard during work.

Prioritize cleaning(deploy a janitor) for the kitchen at night and the canteen during work.

Reduce the patrol to 1 guard. We'll do more with patrols later. It is important to always have some free guards available and they go fast in a small prison.

Cellblock A

Ok, enough paperworky stuff. Let's build our first 15 cells. From (20,29) drag a foundation as shown and then put the walls and doors (all jail cell). Be careful to cleanup everything on the bottom wall (by the shower) so that the crappy building system doesn't demolish it. Commit.

Grounds keeping & Prison Policy should finish around midnight. Take "Prison Maintenance" grant then hire 2 janitors and 2 gardeners, then go ahead and research "Forestry Labour" & "Health".

When Armoury & Health finish "Body Armor" & "Education" are next.

I'm going to slap down another max plus cap since the power draw is getting up there.

Wait for the foundations to build and then layout cell rooms, furniture, plumbing, electrical.

Steal the beds from the holding cell. When it is done, the guards will start transferring inmates from holding into cells auto-magically.

Take "Cell Block A" grant, which will complete instantly. Lay out another 10 cells to the right but don't start building them until the first 15 are done and fully furnished.

See how many are interested in "Kitchen Safety and Hygiene" program, if it is a fair amount go ahead and add it to the schedule. I normally do a 0900 and a 1600 session, which may seem like overkill when our kitchen only has room for 2 inmates but remember, programs help rehabilitation rates.

Speaking of, let's assign 2 inmates to the kitchen if we didn't already.

Policy

Now that we've got control over Policy, there are going to be some changes around this place!

Privilege defaults are fine.

Misconduct. Certain settings I've found persist between saves and so I am no longer 100% what is default and what you need to change, but make "Destruction, Intoxication, Found Drugs and Possess Luxuries" punishment lockdown instead of solitary, or maybe even none (at least for low-med).

As it is you are going to be driven nuts by the amount of people coming and going from solitary and the backlog because it takes up free guards time.

Also seach them and their cells for every infraction (even the ones you don't punish), if they are troublemakers, they probably have contraband.

Nutritional policy, set to recommended for all. Then deselect all but minimum security and set to medium quantity and high variety (instead of high quantity and medium variety). It makes your kitchen calculations a little more complicated, but once you get a large prison with dedicated security level cellblocks, you want to treat higher security prisoners progressively worse to make them want to behave better for a transfer.

Cutoff and visitation recommended settings are fine. The old wisdom was set the cutoff to 15% across the board but that was when you got fined heavily for repeat offenders.

Finally at the bottom, other policies, "Use Cell Quality Ratings" unchecked, the rest checked. The log is ugly as sin and a blight on your screen, but it is very useful.

Once you've researched Health and built an infirmary take "Inmate Health Well Being" and hire 2 doctors. We will work on the reqs for "Visitation Rights" later, after we've done the others.

While we aren't concerned with room ratings right now (and everyone is sharing the same facilities so it isn't like we need to make lower security ratings more attractive) it doesn't hurt to improve them. (it is probably a bug that we can assign breathe therapy w/o gangs dlc, but ♥♥♥♥'em).

We're also going to make a small running track. About 2 more dumbbells would raise the room score by 2 BTW, which would be max for its size.

Staffing

So let's talk about staffing. The PDF guide gave some numbers that I have found work out rather well, I am going to give levels for 100 inmates, which is what we are aiming for by the end here. These are the numbers the calculator uses as well so you can play with that when building your own prisons. Staff are a huge expense so we want to run as lean as we can, so start small and hire more as your population grows.

32 Guards - The larger the prison, the shared spaces overhead goes down, although as you get large you will take a much higher max sec pop which requires more guards per inmate, so I think that 32 per 100 is a good rule of thumb.

8 Dog Handlers - Dogs have two jobs, finding tunnels and finding drugs. Put them on patrols around your cellblocks as well as entrances and anywhere else drugs can come in (visitation, perimeter, etc).

4 Armed Guards - Don't go crazy here. They are expensive and a double-edged sword to deploy, since they make the inmates unhappy with their mere presence. You'll need more of them for higher security as you get large (larger than this guide), but you can redeploy the ones you have already.

0 Snipers - I'd say 1 per guard tower, maybe plus 1 to cover breaks. I don't use them much because of the large expense.

12 Chefs (reduce once prisoners can work in the kitchen, but always have at least 4 on hand to teach the program and grab ingredients from Imports) - that's using the old kitchen calc of 1 per 10 inmates+2(as runners, dishwashers, etc) I've kept it the same in the spreadsheet. I wouldn't rely completely on prison labor here either.

4 Janitors - This assumes you assign about 1 of 10 prisoners to cleaning cupboard and 1 of 16 to laundry, but this should be enough.

4 Gardeners - If you have a really big forestry zone then you may need more. But I mean BIG! When your forestry is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts compared to your forestry. It also depends if you are assigning inmates to the forestry or not.

2 Doctors - I suggest a flat 2 per prison, very large prisons may benefit from more (especially if you have multiple infirmaries then you absolutely need more). You need 1 in the infirmary for the drug treatment program, and then I like to have a floater to manually send out to treat wounded after big brawls. They work really fast so you don't need a lot of them.

1 of each Administrative Staff (Warden, Chief, Accountant, Foreman, Psychologist, Lawyer) -Warden/Chief/Accountant/Lawyer always 1 and only 1. A large prison may need multiple shrinks. I think each workshop requires a foreman, which would mean 5 workshops is the limit, at any rate I recommend it.

8 Workers (you can hire many more temporarily if you are building a lot of new infrastructure). - This number is just for upkeep, it assumes there is little to no construction to be done. They also haul lumber from the forestry, so see gardeners above.

Kennel

Body armor is probably done, "Taser" (because this is how you actually spell it dumbasses, #@*% Google it if you don't believe me) next.

While those last 10 cells are building, let's get started on our K-9 unit (we probably should have done this earlier TBH). Drag out a 5x5 Kennel at (58,59). Put a fence around it with a staff gate. Place a couple dog crates. You really only need 1 for every 2 dog handlers and we are going to have 8. Go ahead and hire half of them now.

We're going to setup some dog patrols too. Slap down a dog bowl somewhere on each patrol route, it will help keep them on duty longer.

When the cell blocks are done we will have 4 dog patrols at night. During work & meals 2 dogs patrol the entrance. 2 Dogs are assigned to the canteen during meals as well. We leave 2 off duty during work hours so hopefully they get some rest.

Armoury

When Taser finishes do "Taser Rollout". When "Tax Relief" finishes do "Offshore Tax Haven" if you can afford it; otherwise do "Recycling Incentive"

Left of but not attached to the Kennel, at (48,58) layout an 8x10 foundation.

Then partition off so the top room is 4 high and the botttom 3. Put a staff door on the top room and a secure door on the bottom room.

When it builds zone the bottom room as an armoury.
Place a weapons rack, table and 2 guard lockers.

Hire 2 Armed Guards.

Take "Governmental Security Ratings" grant and then add them both to any patrol.

As soon as the grant finishes, take them back off the patrol.

Infirmary & Morgue

Right of but not attached to the Kennel, at (65,48) layout a 16x7 foundation. Partition off a 3x5 room on the right side, and put staff only doors.

The 10x5 room will be the Infirmary, put in 10 medical beds and some lights, deploy the Doctors and a single guard to it all 3 shifts.

The smaller room will be the Morgue, put 5 slabs in it. Make it staff only from the deployment screen. Take the "Inmate Health and Well Being" grant.

Some have said the morgue isn't worthwhile but think about this, if a guard gets killed their weapons and keys get left on their body, so do you really want that body left out wherever? Build a morgue and make it staff only, capisce?

Security Room & Perimeter

With the inmates going into cells where they can tunnel out, it is time that we get an outer perimeter fence around the whole prison as well.

Be sure to place a staff gate above and below the main complex so staff can get in and out of the area, but no one will cut through it otherwise.

Also we're going to make the top of the Armoury building into Security. Place a desk, chair, cabinet.

Depending where we are with research, also a CCTV monitor(eventually 2), door controller, phone tap.

Deploy 1 guard all shifts for each of those devices that you have.

So after Taser Deployment, "Surveillance">"Remote Access">"Intelligence">"CCTV Improvement".

When you get the CCTV take "Max-Sec Infrastructure Implementation" grant and place 8 CCTV cameras in strategic spots and hook them up.

If you decide to move a camera, disconnect it first as there is a bug where the CCTV connections will not get returned otherwise, and while you can have more than 8 cameras per, it hampers their operation.

Raise your total guard count to 20 and the grant will complete. Pro-tip: CCTV can see through walls; take advantage of it in your placements.

Place a phone tap too, and connect it to all your payphones.

When we get the door controller, we are going to add some gates to the roadway to improve our security posture over there. Plop them down, add needed fences and then connect them to the controller once they are built.

Visitation & Common Room

I'm going to kinda blast these next few out since I have gone ahead and built all of it.

The order is a little less critical here and can be flexed around your needs and current situation.

Just complete all of them before moving onto cell block b, but don't lollygag. Git'er dun!

Take the "Visitation Rights" grant. Build an 8x4 Visitation room. Zone the room. Place 3-5 visitation tables.

Build a 6x6 Common room. Place a pool table, 2 tvs, a couple sofas and some phones(although we have enough phones in the yard, it is good to have phones scattered around, granted 11 are overkill for 50 inmates...what was this guy thinking).

Classroom

Build a 5x6 classroom. Zone, place 1 office desk and 14 student desks. We're starting to see more and more of the weaknesses of this layout (and I even tweaked a bit).

"The Reform through Education Initiative" calls for 20 desks. Also the foundation education program can take up to 20 students and the fuller the class the more efficient, and classes cost us money. A lot of money.

However when we are ready to take the grant (and we aren't, 1 GED graduate sounds easy enough, but it will take forever) we just need to slap down another 6 desks somewhere, wait a second or two and then cancel them. It isn't easy bein' cheesy but sometimes you just gotta do it.

As far as the programs being short, it's a concern for larger prisons, and also only for the foundation program. This will get us through for now.

Speaking of programs, I think it is time. We already scheduled the KSH program. We're going to schedule some other programs too. You can click on start program for as many sessions as you want either from the notebook or the grid (edit schedule).

Even though we don't own Gangs, we can schedule Breathe Therapy from the grid, probably a bug but #@*% you Paradox. We have to deal with all the other bugs we don't like, we got a good bug we're gonna use it.

The grid is generally the way to go, since we can control which room we want to use (if we've got multiples, when you get large you may want say 1 classroom for low, 1 for medium and 1 for max security, etc)

So right now we are going to schedule 3 taser classes back to back to get all the guards trained rapidly. This is gonna cost us some doche cause they will run to the armoury for tasers after they pass. We'll cut it down to once a day after they are done (because any replacement guards will need training).

We don't have a shop, chapel or parole rooms so we can't schedule those right now. The GED won't have any takers until some people pass the foundations

Reception

So this wasn't something in the original plan(it was a rather late addition to the game actually).

As we don't need that much room for garbage, we are going to steal some space from it.

Reception is pretty simple, a desk, chair and a table for clean uniforms.

Easy peezey, lemon squeezey.

Incoming inmates will get strip searched, cutting down on contraband.

We really should have put this in sooner but I always forget.

Laundry & Cleaning Cupboard

Once again I'll plug the Prison Calculator V3.0 for calcs, but for the guide I am going to provide you with what you need, so magnaminous am I.

Another weakness of this layout is there was no laundry. I don't know if it wasn't a thing then or what.

The holding cell really was overly large (his even had a large shower room) so since we started building cells we can shrink it to a 5x5 and repurpose the rest.

It's also coincidentally just the right size for a 50 inmate laundry room.

Put a regular door on it. 1 washing machine w/plumbing and electric, 2 short laundry boards (functionally the same as the long board), 3 baskets (they will move around don't worry) and a small table.

So the cleaning cupboard is the easiest room you ever built. 4x5 will cover our needs. You can put a light and a CCTV in it.

Take the "Prisoner Acclimatization and Engagement" grant. Assign 5 prisoners to the cupboard, 3 to laundry and...2 to kitchen. Yeah, we're screwed!

No worries. Zone 12 squares of kitchen in any room (like the canteen) and assign another prisoner. Once the grant finishes put the room back the way it was.

Inmate Nutrition Research

When we get 20 inmates, "Inmate Nutrition Research" grant will unlock. It is kinda a pain and will increase your risk of trouble for the first couple days, but it's best to get it out of the way ASAP, as the more inmates we get the worse it will be. It takes a fixed 4 days.

Go to regime and change the 1300 & 1400 slots from "Eat" to "Free time", then go to policy and change nutritional to "Low" & "Low". Make sure it was applied to everyone. We're going to do this for 2 days.

Keep an eye on it as you go about other things and the minute the low meal is done switch everyone to a high quantity, high variety meal. Put the regime back the way it was before (1300 and 1400 eat) and make the morning (0800) free-time period eat as well.

After 2 days of this the grant will complete and you can set the meals and regime back to normal.

Cell Block B

Down and dirty! We're going to lay out the 2nd 25 cells, which brings us to 50 inmates.

Make sure everything above is done (ok, ok...you don't need to wait to finish the Nutritional grant) Plan it out like the top cell blocks. Then build, do plumbing & electric, zone cells, build furniture.

Stick a 3rd cap in too. You know the drill by now! Go ahead and take the "Cell Block B" grant.

You are probably getting annoyed by messages(or will be shortly) about cell quality being too low even though we have not turned cell quality on.

Normally I would have a window in each cell, but this layout doesn't allow for that. Put a bookshelf in every cell (they are cheap at $30) and the thing should stop nagging you.

Shoring up weak points - Canteen Revisited

So this is a decent basic prison, although it still lacks some features and has some defects.

We're going to go through and fix some of them. Some of them I purposely left as a learning exercise, because they are still easy enough to deal with. I want y'all to understand some of the frustrations of bad planning without having to be completely aggravated by it.

Sometimes we just need to bulldoze and/or repurpose to keep things a manageable size early game. For instance I have better visitation and classroom, along with chapel and parole rooms I would normally use in this build. They are also much further away and make the early prison cost too much.

So you might have noticed by now that the canteen is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ design. While it works to cram everything in, it makes everyone move very slowly as the table and benches are considered to be "solid" objects, as opposed to say the cooker and fridge which can be passed right through.

We're going to expand the wall up 1 (yes, that is why I left that unpaved, I set you up on purpose as a learning experience) and then reorganize the tables and benches so that it is a little less congested.

Beef up to 5 guards during this time as well. Rule of thumb is 1 guard per 10 prisoners in the canteen and 1-2 guards in the kitchen, depending how many inmates you have working there, but at least 1.

The kitchen guard should be there during the work period as well (so deployment 1 & 2). We can now get a 3rd inmate working in there too. You can also throw another couple fridges in. Finally we did a little fancy flooring.

Protected Custody

So taking a look at our needs to determine what we should do next, I have a number of snitches and ex-cops so it would be a good idea to get them into PC.

Zone it PC and then make a canteen out of the front room and a dormitory out of the back(including shower area). The guards will start bringing the PC prisoners over. Check your logistics and make sure the kitchen and laundry are supplying the block.

We're going to set their regime a little different (supermax too while we're at it)

You should be able to figure out what to build and where to build it from the screenshot, I am not going to hold your hand anymore(well maybe a little, but not in public).

This is a good time to set prisoner intake to "Fill capacity" too.

I forgot to place 3 bookshelves (in between the beds), you should go ahead and do that.

Chapel

The Spiritual Guidance program generally has high demand and it is pretty beneficial to run, so it is high time we build a chapel.

You may have noticed we are constantly building and tearing down little pieces of fence. I can't tell you how many escapees I have had because I started building an upgrade without securing the area first. Fence is very cheap and builds very fast.

Also notice I keep adding pavement, as the prison gets larger the benefits of a "fast" floor grow.

So once we are built and furnished, go into the scheduler and add "Spiritual Guidance" at 1600.

Parole

So this was another really weak point of this design, that we are just getting to parole rooms now.

They might not have been a thing or they might have been left out on purpose because in the old days you got a heavy fine if a parolee re-offended. That isn't a thing anymore.

So parole actually makes you money because you get a bonus for early release and then you get the intake of a replacement inmate. It can wreak havoc on your work programs, especially the workshop but it is what it is. Large workshop deployments need large max security wings to keep a stable workforce.

Layout this big foundation. No, it isn't a mistake that we stop 1 shy of the fence. Make sure the chapel is finished before you start this. We're also going to move the classroom and visitation up here.

I neglected to mention it or do it in the plan, but fence the corridor left side and add an airlocked visitor only entrance.

Steal the desks and visitation tables from the old rooms(and un-zone them) and then build what is needed to finish it out.

We're going to go and schedule 3 parole hearings in each room (0800,1200 & 1600). We'll also need to reschedule any classroom training into the new room (don't forget the taser).

This is a good time to add another CCTV monitor since we'll want some more CCTV.

Oh, and assign a guard to visitation during work hours, might keep a parole officer from getting stabbed in the neck with a pen. I used to put metal detectors at the door, but that didn't prevent the aforementioned stabbing.

Miss-Cellany

Oh god, is this ever going to end???

Once you've got "Intelligence" be sure to regularly check prisoners in solitary that can be turned to informants. Keep an eye out for snitches and ex-cops and change them to protective custody. Also if you get a legendary, or even other problematic inmates like combinations of volatile and strong/tough/etc and make them supermax.

We should hire a lawyer, but we need to kick the foreman out of his office(we will move him to an office at the workshop when we build it). Not a big rush, but it will hold us up researching "Death Row", we also want "Execution Liability" in pretty short order, "Permanant Punishments" is usually handy, but with the Lobbyist as warden this prison has been very tranquil...almost boring.

I've never had a use for "Small Cells" and the 2 Legal...if you are in bad enough straights to need them, you probably can't afford to research them. Maybe selling stocks, which I haven't messed with much. One could probably cheese the Gov Bailout grant somehow and then these would be useful but I haven't looked into it. I usually research them eventually anyway.

Offshore Tax Haven will finish at some point too, do the rest of the Accountants research as well.

At 30 inmates "Crackdown on Drugs" grant opens. This can go really fast or it can take forever. Drugs you've already found count towards this.

At 40 inmates "Tool Cleanup" grant opens. This usually take forever, although sometimes it goes fast. You just keep doing shakedowns until it finishes. There may also be some bug related to save/reload involved here too I am not sure.

As far as "The Reform through Education" grant, keep an eye on your completion rate for the "Foundation Education Program", you need 10. Also make sure at least 1 person is interested in/has completed the "General Education Qualification" before you select this grant.

Workshop

We're going to start making license plates now so take "Prison Manufacturing Facility" grant.
This is going to use another 200 power so place 2 more super caps.

Build the facility and then add 5 saws and 5 presses to start with. I went overboard with the tables.

Schedule the "Workshop Safety Induction" program for 1100. Assign 20 workers.

Now depending how many qualified workers you have add saws & presses in a 1:1 up to 9 or 10 of each as you have workers and the cash to do so.

So the old calculations and discussions figure an extra worker per 8 or so to just act as a runner. That would be 18 machines with 2 runners. I am not sure if there is any efficiency gain as opposed to just making a full 20, especially since workmen will ferry materials. At any rate the shop has the capacity.

It could also very easily be re-tooled for carpentry; here is how I lay that out:
We really don't have enough space for all the trees we would need to grow to keep 5 carpentry benches fully working 8 hours and so I am not going to cover it here.

The spreadsheet has calcs for forestry sizes so you can grow your own (see what I did there?).

Add the "Carpentry Apprenticeship" at 1800 if you decide to go that route.

Mailroom, Shop & Library

So these 3 are nice to have but not critical, it is time to add them now that we are getting down to the end. The library and mail rooms have to be 5x5, the shop 4x4.

We've got the old classroom and visitation to repurpose. The library will fit in the classroom nicely. Visitation is too narrow for anything but the shop, and 4x4 is fine, so we will partition it and figure out what to do with the rest of the space later.

For Mail we'll need to just build a new room somewhere. Next to the workshop below the armoury works. Furnish all 3 rooms and assign workers to them. Not much else to say here. Make sure the shop front faces the right way.

Gymnasium

So for sake of completeness, we'll add the gym. I usually don't build one. I think it is a Gangs DLC add-on that, in case you hadn't noticed Paradox was so #@*% lackadaisicall about integrating the DLC that a lot of crap shows up in your menus even if you don't own the DLC. They did such a piss-poor job with this game when they took it over. They are just in it for the money and it shows. [/rant]

Anyway...it's another room, with fun activities that we already mostly have in the yard anyway but oh well. I don't have a lot of $ left and I want to get an electric chair so the minimum is a weight bench and a gym mat, so guess what we're getting.

Forestry

So I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand I don't want to add any for a couple reasons, and not because I am against it in general, no siree, I love my wood. (Uh-huh....Don't start that $#*! again!).

We can make some money off it even without carpentry, but it is going to tie up the saws and we want those license plate blanks made. I'm also short on cash and grants I can finish, especially if my license plates don't get made. I'm just going to give some tips here.

There isn't much to it. Zone some room and gardeners will come and start planting trees. Saplings cost you $100/each and they will buy them automagically, so watch your cashflow and build small. You need about 17 trees per carpentry bench and you'll want to plant 1/5 of them per day.

Although a tree only takes up 9 squares (3x3) you need to allocate about 12 squares of forestry per, because the gardeners will plant them at random and while there is probably some cheesy way to control them, it isn't worth the effort.

Once again, buy my spreadsheet! (I mean hell, it is actually free) The calculations are there.

Ok, if you are playing through in "Bootstrap" there is enough room for a Forestry and 100 inmates, that extra 10 tiles width makes a world of difference. Also note the changes to the workshop.

Death Row

Death row inmates come few and far between. 2 cells is plenty really, make them nice and build an execution room with some seating for witnesses, and an electric chair(duh!).

Drag the intake slider all the way to the right.

Change 1 of the 0800 parole hearings to a "Death Row Appeal"

Cell Block C

We're going to bring this prison up to 100 before we sell it off. I was going to leave it off at 50 but I'm still waiting for death row inmates. I am not going to hold your hand through this, you should know what to do by now.

Remember that you'll need to double up on food, laundry and other supporting services as well. I will include a screenshot for the desperate.
Yeah, so I cheesed it, but it works. Day 17 and not a single death row inmate. I wanted to go out with a bang spark! Sometimes that is the way it goes, usually I'd have fried a few by now.

So we can now sell this dump for a whopping $280k and start over on whatever size map with whatever options we want.

If you own DLC, you can go ahead and enable whatever options at this point too.

Unfortunately, we don't get to keep our research, but we'll have $250k more than we started with this time.

You may be wondering why it says $50k but you only got $30k, did we get cheated? No, we got $20k (less actually, they ripped us off) worth of crap with the utilities. What? You thought they were free? Bwuhahahaha! Yer'killin'me Smalls!

You could also keep playing this prison, unlock more land and keep expanding.

If you made it all the way through thanks for reading, I know it was long. This concludes the tutorial, the next section is just me sharing some of my own designs.

Some of my own designs

I humbly present some of my own designs here for your enjoyment.

Sector A

Cell blocks for 100 + 16 solitary. Each cell block has its own shower room. Most services provided - Canteen, small yard, shop, laundry and cleaning cupboard. Security with door control and monitoring for 16 CCTV. Small basic staff room. Water heaters and radiators for temperature enabled.

Workshops

For 20 workers, license plates only:
For 20 workers, license plates & superior beds:

Large Kitchen

This will feed about 350 inmates, assuming recommended meal plans and a roughly even mix of low/med/max security. Typically this would service 3xSector A (above) and up to 5x specialized self-contained cellblocks of 10 (supermax/protected/death row/insane with DLC)

Master Scheduler

So I didn't come up with this, credit goes to the "Prison Architect “Best Of” Guide",
author unknown.

I use this extensively, and of course the regime to go with it, because your programs need to fall into work periods.

If you've got Perfect Storm enabled then you'll have more staff programs in a training room, I'd do those at night too. I forget which DLC (probably Gangs) has the "Advanced Disarming" program, which is classroom, also do at night around the Taser program. Unfortunately unlike Breathe Therapy we can't schedule it w/o the DLC.

Credits/References

Rooms sizes and efficiency (alpha 0.30) - Ripped a lot of info right from it. This is pretty much the layout we will be using, which I pieced together from his messy screenshots. Considering how out of date it is, it is amazing how well it holds up for the current version sans DLC.

GC13's Easy Guide to a Successful Prison - Ripped a lot of info from here too. There is a lot of still good advice here.

Beginner Advice from a 238.7 Hour Player[acrobat.adobe.com] - This is a really great guide. I learned a lot from it. Inspired most of my own designs, but i have ripped it off pretty much wholesale as well. In regards to this guide, we use his settings for several things like regime/deployment/programs schedule/staff ratios as I have used them heavily myself and find them very good.

PA Wiki - Fandom[prison-architect.fandom.com] - Source of much info.

PA Wiki[prisonarchitect.paradoxwikis.com] - Another source of much info.

Prison Architect Calculator(V3.0) - Shameless self-plug here!

Pros and cons of license plates and forestery - Reddit discussion which contained a very thorough analysis of forestry and carpentry and helped me make some sense of all the conflicting sources of information from outdated guides about this very lucrative part of the game.

[Krougal]

Steam sucks. I decided I wanted to play again and come back to my guide to find many images missing again! Error 29 is still a thing too. I have fixed them all again, but this is the last time. This is the only one of my guides I have had trouble with, although it is also the most image heavy.

[Krougal]

Wow! So I didn't realize how bad Steam screwed the pooch here. It seems to be a known issue with the dreaded "error 29" and it somehow trashed most of my images. Everything is fixed now.

[Krougal]

@Gavin I did do some heavy reorganization of the guide but I am not sure what happened to the 2 images that should be in that section. If you notice any other messed up sections please let me know.

[Gavin]

I like the idea of this guide but several times through the guide you say "build x as shown" but don't have have an image to refer to (such as in "Cell Block A" section). It's quite confusing.

[boy named my brains out]

so true