Excessive tunneling

[Warkral]

I currently have a prison in day 23, and no joke, am finding 3-5 tunnels a week. My issue is, how many prisoners actually tunnel out of a prison a decade? One maybe? Yet I have 3-5 prisoners a week who apparently are able to tunnel 100 yards in 2 days. Any chance a dev can look at this? I am linking a pic to show the tunnel this prisoner created in 2 days, tunneling under my $80 thousand dollar perimeter wall:

[Skull Beef]

Metal detector in your canteen to stop prisoners stealing spoons etc. You will notice a tiny yellow flag pop up on tunnelling fails do shakedowns, use confidential informants also to detect items. 3-5 tunnels a week is not excessive I can get 1 a day sometimes.

[NBJeff]

How much time do the prisoners spend in their cells?

Prisoners who have a lot of time on their hands and are lacking in "Freedom" are at much higher risk of starting a tunnel.
I find that giving them some time in the yard/freetime before sending them in their cells greatly reduces the interest in tunneling/escaping.

[WiseWoodrow]

Prisoners will tunnel as much as they can. If you have bad security, and lots of sleep/lockup time, yeah you're gonna have some problems. Let us see your prison layout/regime

[NBJeff]

And obviously the prisoner was raddled that other cells had TVs and his didn't

[grimmer87]

lol yes, tunneling is a bit excessive, but it makes it a more fun game, if you pave down the side of the cell block and across the back, i think it slows the tunnelers down. also looks pretty!

[WiseWoodrow]

I actually very rarely get tunnels. I have guard dogs patrol outside, I detect one once every like, 5-6 days, and they don't even have to tunnel as far as your prisoners do to get out.
You just got to manage it better.

[Mikeldiablo]

Yeah, just make sure they can't steal and stash tools. Wooden picks will be easier to stash because they're undetectable. If you find a tunneling inmate (his sleep need will go up), search his toilet and that of other inmates in the vicinity; there might be more to the tunnel than one guy.

[Freebo]

Guard dogs are excellent just setup patrols around your prison blocks. As said before metal detectors in and out of every room which contains items which could be used for tunneling and paving around your buildings. Another tip is to do a shakedown just after the prisoners go to bed every night or every other night. Usually this is when your guards have the most down time and prisoners dont seem to get effected by being woken up to be searched.

[Kilyle]

It shouldn't be impossible to make a perimeter wall that prevents tunneling -- because it should go down into the ground for a goodly amount. That's why it's expensive, isn't it? And why it should take more time to build.

You can stop rodents from tunneling by putting certain meshes down a few inches. Humans should be stoppable with several feet, if only because it's difficult to dig downwards without being able to brace the tunnels. And for that matter, why aren't there tunnel collapses, maybe ones that hurt or kill the tunneler? If it just traps them for a while, maybe you should get an alert that nobody has seen Bob today, and you search his cell and find the tunnel and have a chance of getting him out before he's too hurt. He'd be less likely to tunnel for a while thereafter.

Also, a tunnel that far in two days? That is bullcrap. There needs to be more attention paid to how far you can dig with a spoon through hard dirt.

I'm still annoyed that my dogs are constantly alerting me to tunnels but I can't directly affect those tunnels, I have to find the entrances, and searching the nearby cells hasn't yet revealed it. Shouldn't workers be able to tunnel down toward a suspected tunnel -- maybe taking some time to do so -- so as to find the tunnels without finding the correct cell necessarily? Or could I buy some equipment to scan near where the dogs indicated, thus locating the right square to dig down to, then backtracking the tunnel to its source?

[WinterTempest]

Well, since sentence time is sped up in Prison Architect as 0.2 years per in-game day, naturally their tunneling efforts are going to be faster. Make sure you have a perimeter walk every day for your dogs within the perimeter wall, if a dog gives a yellow flag, make another dog walk the same spot. I always wait for two yellow flags on the same tile before I put everyone on Lockdown (which returns prisoners to their cells, including tunnelers) and search the toilets of anyone who seems excessively tired.

Prisoners are clever, but the only way to beat tunnelers is to be more clever.

[Mace_70903]

I've found the easiest way to find tunnels is indirectly. All I do is set my policy so that if a prisoner does anything wrong he gets his cell searched. It might not always works but it will definitely help a lot with not much effort from you.

[Gaolulz]

I've had a similar issue;
Metal detectors at the cell block entrance, and making the area next to the fence 'staff only' helped, but I ended up buying the adjacent block and putting another 20m of grass between fences, to distance the prisoners from the edge of the map.
Open ground is actually easier to tunnel in, but distance seem to deter them anyway.
Perimeter walls also make a big difference, but are expensive.

[Skavies]

Or could I buy some equipment to scan near where the dogs indicated, thus locating the right square to dig down to, then backtracking the tunnel to its source?

You sure can, it's called a toilet.

When your dogs find a tunnel (not a single flag, but lots of them found by a couple dogs), place a toilet and remove it to uncover the tunnel. Very often, they are in line with toilets in the cells, that will help you aim better than placing one in the middle of the flag area.

Searching toilets does not always find tunnels dug under them, but dismantling them in cells (or the yard where you place one in a high density flag zone) where you find tools, but no tunnels will expose them if they exist. If dismantling the toilet did not find the tunnel, the tunnel does not exist. (at least it does not exist in that cell...)