So, I've officially finished a prison. I set out with an idea of what it was going to look like and I achieved that. Its a small (well, it didn't end up that small) minimum security prison with a somewhat softer attitude towards the prisoners.
I brought in some medium security prisoners by accident the first day. Aside from one of those prisoners, Mackenzie, who got upgraded to high security for beating a workman unconscious (and later picking fights with guards) everything has been pretty quiet. Despite an incident where a workman demolished a wall before the foundation on the other side was complete and prisoners flooded out, the sole successful escape has been via tunnel, and there's been no deaths. My anemic cashflow is usually supplemented by a hefty days without incident bonus, and there are no misdemeanors that are punished by solitary (we don't actually have a solitary wing). Due to space constraints (I wanted the whole prison to be one brick building of a set size) I don't have quite as many accommodations for the prisoners as I would like, the classroom and the yard and such are too small and I would like some more showers. But really its a pretty nice prison to be assigned to all things considered. Mackenzie is getting psycological help and I kind of want to see what happens there; either way he's up to be released soon and once that happens there's not going to be too much reason to stick around. Guess I'll sell the prison and start a new one.
Since this was my first prison I went a while without doing anything about contraband. This resulted in the amusing discovery that 3 prisoners had managed to smuggle, steal, and trade between them more than half the prison's contraband. One had 5 different implements that could be used for digging, one had an impressive array of drugs, meds and alcohol, and the third had not only drugs and alcohol but 4 cell phones.