Is Solitary/Lockdown benfitial currently?

[Samus]

Ok, so I've just recently joined the alpha and this is my first post, but I have a question concerning solitary/lockdown.

Is it worth it to utilize them? In my first couple of prisons I had riots and fights all the time. In my current prison, I have been incident free for over 850hrs. The only thing I changed was that I removed all punishment.

I found that prisoner's needs were not met at all while in solitary/lockdown. So even though they are suppressed for their stay, as soon as they are released and the suppression dissipates, they are now even worse than before. So I ended up with this constant cycle of fighting, solitary, and straight back to fighting causing a downward spiral in my prison that my guards could not handle.

Honestly, I would think that seeing a fellow prison member taken off to solitary and not seeing them for 6-8 hours would disinterest other prisoners to cause problems. However, there is currently nothing like that that I've experienced.

[PD-Freak]

Hello there.
The way I see it is that solitary/lockdown can be and are useful as long as the time is a small one. Originally I had my prisoners locked up and put in solitary for days even weeks and because of this my prisoners rioted a lot. Now I have say 5 hours the average punishment in lockdown or solitary and my prison runs fine as they are well and truly suppressed but also they still get their needs met.
Hope this answers your question.

[kknight13]

Most of my prisons I have the regime set up well enough that after hours in solitary/lockdown they are able to get their needs down sufficiently before the suppression wears off that they are fine. I use the solitary and lockdown simply to keep the prisoners isolated, If I have the money for it I add a toilet in the cells to keep that need down, but otherwise I find solitary and lockdown great for simply keeping the number of prisoners, specifically the troublesome prisoners, my guards have to deal with down. I tend to have a minimum 5 hour solitary policy and 10 hours for lockdown and it works pretty well.

[MiriW]

I find that punishments of 2-4 hours is ideal for causing rioting prisoners with red needs to become complacent long enough for them to satisfy those needs before returning to a normal state.

[xander]

There are two ways to keep prisoners compliant: you can punish the hell out of them, which will give them the special status "Suppressed" (or something like that), or you can go out of your way to make them feel well treated. Neither happy prisoners nor suppressed prisoners will break the rules. Currently, it seems to be harder to keep prisoners suppressed than to keep them happy. This is likely a balance issue that will be addressed once the game leaves the alpha phase of development.

xander

[_alphaBeta_]

From perusing the threads since the policy functionality came online, I think many people are using very long punishments. These probably make sense to the player from the real-world perspective. From the simulation perspective, however, prisoners become maxed out suppressed in only a few hours of solitary. While it may make real-world sense that a prisoner should serve a week in solitary because he just murdered the gardener, after the first few hours, gameplay-wise you aren't accomplishing anything. When the prisoner is finally released, they're just as suppressed, but now have lots of other needs.

As was said, keep punishments short. I've seen no word on whether the suppression system is planned to be tweaked or not. Probably a beta balance issue for someday. Personally, I'd like to see time slow way down across the board. IMHO, it should take a day or two at least to max out suppression, and prison sentences should take a whole lot more game hours to go by.

[xander]

The other alternative might be to not actually have any regular cells at all, and only solitary cells. ;)

Of course, that suggests that it ought to be possible to deliver food to solitary cells.

xander

[UberFuber]

The other alternative might be to not actually have any regular cells at all, and only solitary cells.

Of course, that suggests that it ought to be possible to deliver food to solitary cells.

xander

Yeah, that's one of the big wish list, the ability for staff to deliver food to cell doors.

[fresh meat]

fights and riots dimished for me when i started to put beds, showers and toilets into solitary cells. that helped ease the needs .