Not all criminals are uneducated

(previously 'DEVELOPER') Private forum for registered community members. To register, please visit www.prison-architect.com/register.

Moderator: NBJeff

Kilyle
level1
level1
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:42 am

Not all criminals are uneducated

Postby Kilyle » Fri Jun 30, 2017 6:51 am

I realize that poor education is a problem that often leads to crime, but the idea that 100% of criminals coming into the prison are so uneducated that they can't even sort library books or mail is not realistic and, to be honest, it's a little offensive. You can't, like, divide humans into "educated" and "not educated" and conclude that all the criminals come from the uneducated group so the educated group would never break the law.

It also doesn't fit with the crimes that these characters get in for. Is it likely that you'd become a competent forger without having some level of basic education? What about fraud or tax evasion? White collar crimes are done by people who got an education and still went down that path.

So I would like to see the criminals have a chance of coming into the jail with the Basic or General Education already filled. I honestly don't care if the chance is low -- like 5% or whatever -- just that some of the guys you bring in will, in fact, be capable of sorting library books alphabetically, without additional research or training. The "already educated" trait (whatever it ends up getting called) could vary according to some associated traits (e.g. Clever... is there an Introverted or Bookish trait?), as well as security level (the more physically dangerous criminals might be inversely proportionate to the more already-educated criminals?).
AchedTeacher
level0
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Oct 05, 2014 6:36 pm

Re: Not all criminals are uneducated

Postby AchedTeacher » Tue Jul 25, 2017 11:12 pm

Yeah, minsec has no foundation education too. Pretty stupid.
Kilyle
level1
level1
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:42 am

Re: Not all criminals are uneducated

Postby Kilyle » Fri Dec 08, 2017 4:01 am

Heck, how about this? Assume that the prison you start with is pretty low-ranking, and thus gets only uneducated prisoners. However, you can do certain things to increase the quality of incoming prisoners. Maybe one of the Wardens has the special of attracting prisoners with higher chances of education.

But maybe you get a Boon once you've raised the prison's quality to a certain level, which changes the statistics of the incoming prisoners. Maybe it's a choice of a few different possibilities. An example case:

Say some 0.5% of incoming prisoners enter the prison with a Skill. This could be Literacy, Workshop, Cooking, Cleaning, maybe a couple other possibilities. Each new prison could have a hidden variable to skew the incoming prisoners in a given direction (e.g. this prison randomly has more ex-cooks coming in, fewer ex-teachers). Regardless, it's a very small percentage of the prisoners.

Once you unlock the upgrade, the rate shifts. Maybe you get to put points into which types of prisoners get in, or maybe it just increases all the numbers by like 500% (0.5% becomes 2.5%). It's still kinda low, but you're also getting more prisoners by that time, so you'll see more of them. This ensures that the reform programs aren't obsolete, but getting an ex-teacher or an ex-mechanic in the early days is still quite a boon.

The different security levels might vary -- more physical skills for the MaxSec types, more mental skills for the MinSec types -- but I think they ought to differ more based on which crimes brought them in. Prisoners with white-collar crimes should have higher chances of Literacy; prisoners with other crimes might have more chance of having a Food Handler's Permit or whatever.

I feel like I could put more thought into this idea, but it's hard to concentrate right now (lots of distractions in my house tonight). If I remember, I'll revisit it.
Kilyle
level1
level1
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:42 am

Re: Not all criminals are uneducated

Postby Kilyle » Sat Nov 10, 2018 9:20 am

So hey, I had kinda given up on this game getting good updates, but a couple days ago I logged in for the first time in ages, and bam! new startup screen, a brand-new Mutator mechanic, and a few other random things. Neat! (Only problem right now: I've had to look into modding, because the slow-time mutator doesn't correspondingly slow the needs, which I finally worked out to be the cause of my incredibly horrible riot rate within the first two days. Yikes! Hope they fix that soon.)

Anyway, I would really hope that the devs would think about adding random skills to incoming prisoners! So I'm back hoping to see this idea put into practice.

One thing that might augment this idea is that for a prisoner with a certain pre-skill, the lack of facilities would tick them off worse than other prisoners. Like, if you're already Literate, and yet there's no Library and your cell has no Bookshelf, you're gonna have that Literacy need going at maybe 1.5 to 2.0 or even maybe 2.5 times the regular speed. Or, at least, have the possibility of this (some educated prisoners are more desirous of literacy than others are).

And, again, have it correspond to the prisoners' charges and other traits. It's immersion-breaking to see a character who's got three white-collar crimes and is described as a world-class hacker but doesn't even know enough to sort mail alphabetically.

Return to “Community Members”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests