hope the dogs solve the problem of the prisoners tunneling out of there cells each night...
Solve? Oh no. Never. Just help.
I would say grab a highly rated prebuilt starter prison and see how things work. They tend to be balanced.
Bah! Who needs to figure out how things work anyways? *Goes into the corner and mutters about why I can't figure out how things work.*
Put a fence around your cells (at least), and do a shakedown (search of your cells) every few days. Your guards will find tunnels and mark them as fixing, and the cell won't be used until it's fixed by workers.
The fences are free, and give you time to find the tunnels before they reach freedom. 3-5 tiles away from the walls should do it.
I've tried (Shoddily at that) to try and put a fence around my prison, but by then It was already too late. I probably should have scrapped that prison and tried to create a new one at that point.
I just wait for everyone to be at breakfast or something, then mass-order to search the cell-blocks. You'll still find the tunnels, but the prisoners themselves aren't searched (which is what makes them so mad). I never order searches of prisoners manually at this point, since metal detectors and dogs basically deal with it for me.
Hm... I suppose that would solve the escaping problem, but having a bunch of my guards disposed each day to try and take care of that isn't ideal.
At this point having every prisoner all at once trying to escape each night is a pretty big nuisance, but I suppose that's because I'm terrible at this game and should try harder the next prison I make.