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[Persus13]

Sure, I know what "secure" is about, which makes my problem all the more baffling. IIRC I've first spotted this in my shower building. It's a fully functional building, one 2 space wide entry that exits immediately to a fenced (outside) corridor which connects it to a different parts of the prison. But unless I use doors like I said I use them, the building will flash yellow. Note, only the building, note the corridor also. I mean, you'd think if the building was really an escape route, the corridor would also flash yellow, right? But the corridor is considered and actually is secure, as the shower SHOULD be.

The only thing that makes a tiny bit of sense right now is there's large pipe inside shower, supplying water to shower-heads (but not all, majority is connected with small pipes). So prisoners could theoretically escape through them? If they dig a hole in the ground? Dunno, never had such escapes. But even then the whole damn door issue makes zero sense. Not to mention my laundry room has the same exact problem but it doesn't even have large pipe in it so that makes the whole damn pipe thing moot.

And nope, no bangup. I'll get screenshots soon-ish.

The schedule and canteen problems are probably because of the secure problem, which is causing the prisoners to be locked in their cells, I'm pretty sure. Get a fence up around the building (in addition to the corridor) and it should work out. I generally have this problem early on with my prisons and putting a fence around everything is usually what makes things work again.

[Mini]

IIRC canteens also give the no prisoners assigned warning if there are cells assigned but they have no prisoners in them.

[Sinistar]

You have all the zones set correctly? Max, min, staff only, shared, etc? Is there a staff only zone between cells and canteen?

Yup, no problem there.

The schedule and canteen problems are probably because of the secure problem, which is causing the prisoners to be locked in their cells, I'm pretty sure. Get a fence up around the building (in addition to the corridor) and it should work out. I generally have this problem early on with my prisons and putting a fence around everything is usually what makes things work again.

Hm, iirc I did usually put fence all around, yes, and not this time. Annoyed as I may be because I've constructed the whole thing specifically to forgo the block of fence, I'll give it a try and hope this will do the trick.

IIRC canteens also give the no prisoners assigned warning if there are cells assigned but they have no prisoners in them.

Hmph, well that's a bit silly imho, but what can you do.

edit:
Argblarg. I've actually forgot to put one, ONE fence tile somewhere, breaking my entire security. Put it up, peeps stopped ignoring the schedule, no "insecure" problems and the canteen is working too, now. Good fucking job, me.

I was so sure I've had it enclosed because only the building were flashing and not the faulty corridor. Makes sense though, not being fully enclosed it wasn't consider part of the prison but rather just "outside" and you can't really have all the outside bits marked as insecure. What a mess.

edit 2:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ah yes. 11 deaths, 5 escapes, all in under 24 hours / few min IRL. We are back to normal.

[forsaken1111]

As a general practice I always put a fence line around the entire perimeter of the prison grounds. It helps situations like this, or when you're doing renovations and suddenly a wall is down and they try to escape or something. A nice big fence with road gates = always "secure". Then set the outside area to staff only and anyone going out there will be quickly rounded up.

[Zangi]

Interesting note... the workshop is the only place them prisoners can acquire an undetectable(wood) tool.  I'll probably have to give them some real good incentives to acquire other detectable items on the way back if I want to keep using workshops and hands-off automation. 
Workshops are a boon in monies, but could easily do without it if the prison population is large enough.

I pride myself in a zero escapee records.  Death on the other hand... is a natural part of life. (Plus it requires too much constant micromanagement and/or quickloading to 'handle'.)  Though, starvation is a great way to keep the death record artificially low while also clearing out the prison.
The idea I picked up, segregating folks into supermax and phone tapping them is nice and all, but still gotta micro the incoming. 
Unless I just be super lazy and let in over 100 inmates at a time, rather then trickle them in every day.  Ignore them till I'm good and ready... then pop them to wherever they need to be when I take in another +100 inmates...

Oh right, cell quality.  I think you can game the system.  If you layout an empty cell, it'll still show the quality of the cell in the logistics view.  That might be included in the average cell calculation.
If I throw up a few hundred(or thousand) Q0 1x1 cells in some unfinished corners of my mega buildings... I might be able to have both high quality cells and for my Q1 cells to also be considered average.

I want to make my prison awesomely huge and relatively smooth running, before I jack up the incoming rate of gangs.(so very rare)  The wars will be huge, I hope.

[Sinistar]

Hoooo boy. What a mess. At highest point, 35 rioters. Called riot van, but things calmed down when they arrived. I have no bloody idea why, but final result was 12 dead prisoners, 11 guards, 2 dog handlers, 1 armed guard and a gardener.

Prisoners were quite content up to that point actually. Seems like the cause was a deadly combination of instigator(s), gang members, volatile prisoners and a cop killer. And I'm pretty sure there was some friendly fire after I gave the shooty guy freefire order and he was quite happy to aim at the biggest crowd. Could be that gang members, which I finally have 4 and 1 (had 1 more) tried to take over the yard? Dunno. Fun times!

[Zangi]

[img width=1024]bigpic[img]

Hoooo boy. What a mess. At highest point, 35 rioters. Called riot van, but things calmed down when they arrived. I have no bloody idea why, but final result was 12 dead prisoners, 11 guards, 2 dog handlers, 1 armed guard and a gardener.

Prisoners were quite content up to that point actually. Seems like the cause was a deadly combination of instigator(s), gang members, volatile prisoners and a cop killer. And I'm pretty sure there was some friendly fire after I gave the shooty guy freefire order and he was quite happy to aim at the biggest crowd. Could be that gang members, which I finally have 4 and 1 (had 1 more) tried to take over the yard? Dunno. Fun times!

I've had 200 dead in a day.  The key point is keeping it tidy one day affairs. Finish it quick. Free Fire in force.
Fun times balancing between suppressing the heck out of everyone and satisfying their needs so they don't kick off the next day.  Always those isolated cases.  Free Fire will keep bystanders in line. (Though, I have not had to do this with gangs sticking up for gang members yet..)

And no, gang members did not try to take over anything at those numbers of yours.  You really gotta work at it... bring in lots of medsec/highsec to get a minimum of 10 gang members within 1 gang to unlock the chance to get a legendary highsec that is a gang leader... to unlock the gang features.

[Sinistar]

Ah, a gang LEADER. And I was so happy when I finally got more than 1 gang member, thinking gangs will kick off soon. Damn. Now I understand why there are complete guides how to even get gangs. Kinda sucks, but eh.

[Puzzlemaker]

I feel like you would need to start from scratch on a new prison to really get the gangs rolling.

[forsaken1111]

I feel like you would need to start from scratch on a new prison to really get the gangs rolling.

Oh yeah. And if you get unlucky you can really get screwed over early on if gangs show up too soon. I did my normal thing where I intake ~8 guys to a holding cell with basic facilities. One of the guys happened to be a gang leader and another was a pretty tough guy that the leader made into a lieutenant. I had fights and several murders within a few days

[miauw62]

How can you prevent escapes without micro?
I generally use full search and solitary for all crimes so there's a natural cell rotation, but I still get a few escapes every now and then.

My two armed guards patrol the outside but they generally can't respond fast enough.

[Zangi]

How can you prevent escapes without micro?
I generally use full search and solitary for all crimes so there's a natural cell rotation, but I still get a few escapes every now and then.

My two armed guards patrol the outside but they generally can't respond fast enough.

1a: Metal detectors leading from/to cells. (Easy and usually works, I don't do this anymore.)
1b: Metal detectors between places prisoners can acquire metal objects and cells.  This definitely includes mailroom, shops, libraries, deliveries, storage, visitation, outside near fence/border and kitchen if prisoners have access to them.  Also has the benefit of less weapons floating around.  (My current playstyle.)
1c: Metal detectors at cells and everywhere prisoners can possibly acquire metal objects.

2a: Workshops, where prisoners can acquire wooden/non-metal/non-smelly 'tool'.  Tools can be used to tunnel out.
2b: You can be cheaty and only allow people living in a segregated mega holding cell+amenities to work in a workshop.  (May be too much effort for such little benefit on its own, it works really well with minsec though.  But I guess reform bonus is pretty ok and I have way too much money that this doesn't even matter.)

3: Sleep time = Digging time(At least I think it is how this works...).  Typically, prisoners will sleep on their own in freetime between 10pm and 8am (well somewhere inbetween there...) I've only been giving 1-2 hours of actual sleep schedule and the rest of the morning as free time.  Could be considered cheaty.  (Used to be lockdown = sleep time too)
4. Solitary for everything, cell rotation.
5. Dogs casually patrolling around cell entrance for the random smelly stuff for even more cell rotation.

Ain't any micro here.  No escapes.

[Persus13]

3: Sleep time = Digging time(At least I think it is how this works...).  Typically, prisoners will sleep on their own in freetime between 10pm and 8am (well somewhere inbetween there...) I've only been giving 1-2 hours of actual sleep schedule and the rest of the morning as free time.  Could be considered cheaty.  (Used to be lockdown = sleep time too)

Prisoners will dig instead of sleep if their freedom need is high enough.

One thing I do is have dogs patrolling around the walls of my prison blocks. Most of the time when they detect tunnels it'll be a false alarm, but if you check the area around it and get the tunnel flag again, its time to search or uninstall toilets.

[miauw62]

Hm, I do do most of that stuff, including dog patrols inside cells. I might have to add some extra metal detectors in some places, though.

Workshop thing is problematic :/

[Zangi]

3: Sleep time = Digging time(At least I think it is how this works...).  Typically, prisoners will sleep on their own in freetime between 10pm and 8am (well somewhere inbetween there...) I've only been giving 1-2 hours of actual sleep schedule and the rest of the morning as free time.  Could be considered cheaty.  (Used to be lockdown = sleep time too)

Prisoners will dig instead of sleep if their freedom need is high enough.

One thing I do is have dogs patrolling around the walls of my prison blocks. Most of the time when they detect tunnels it'll be a false alarm, but if you check the area around it and get the tunnel flag again, its time to search or uninstall toilets.

Ah, I have excessive amount of yard/free time then.  But prisoners still occasionally try, with their bare hands.  They don't get more then 1 tile away from the toilet, what with cell rotation measures in place.

My opinion on dogs patrolling around the wall/outside the cell block, it is pointless, flags go away if you pass by it on screen so they don't accumulate if you casually pass by it while being the architect.  You are not the warden, unless you want to be.  You can't really be bothered to run 2-3 cell block shakedowns... every time your dogs throw up a flag right? (Shakedowns/Cell block searches are not 100% chance on finding tunnels, so if you want 100%, you gotta search more then once or to manually go through all the toilets yourself.)

Dogs detecting tunnels are micro, full of false positives and unnecessary waste of kennel space. 
Yes, I know I used to do this too, but I have had zero results cause I NEVER act on dog flags and there were maybe these 3 times they threw up +10 flags over a small area... but I left it on overnight... and the prisoners already escaped or was hit by cell rotation.

Hm, I do do most of that stuff, including dog patrols inside cells. I might have to add some extra metal detectors in some places, though.

Workshop thing is problematic :/

Yup, workshop's wooden tool might be one of the biggest factors to escapees if you don't game the system with a segregated mega holding cell+amenities area. 
And I reckon there are a bunch of ways contraband can get in... including outsiders throwing contraband over the fence if your prisoners have access to 15 squares/outdoor of the border fence.


... I set solitary time for escape attempts at 120 hours and for having tools at 12 hours.  Murder/weapons are only half that time.
Solitary cells can meet every need, other then literacy and freedom, so they don't start causing problems as soon as they are freed. ...  Kinda sad when solitary is more luxurious then my standard 1x3, 1 quality cells.  I might be able to bring that down to 1x2, 1Q or up to 1x3, 2Q.  I thought I saw that I could build the toilet right under the bottom half of the bed.  Showerhead can be placed on the same space as anything else other then another showerhead.