Quick introduction. I'm a second year 'Integral Safety' (pardon the literal translation) student. It's a bachelor that has everything to do with safety. Examples are cybersecurity, safety and security in the public sector (how to deal with a crisis such as a flood or a riot), safety and security in the private sector (how to take care of employees, what you can and cannot do to your employees) and even stuff like how to make sure a festival is save for employees and guests. I always like to summarize my future degree as 'how to prevent people from dying'.
I've played Prison Architect and I love it. However there are quite a few safety and security area's the game is severely lacking in. I thought I would share some of my experiences (I did a small investigation of a prison in the past semester.) in the form of suggestions to the developers of Prison Architect. Bare in mind that this original post is somewhat simplified for readability, for more depth please ask me questions. I'll do my best to answer them.
----- // Fire Safety // -----
Fire safety is arguably one of the most important risks. Fires can start, cause damage and kill anyone anywhere. For prison in particular it's one of the most important aspects. Because prisons are designed to keep prisoners inside, there are a lot of choke-points that, in the situation of a fire, could cause congestion and deaths. Not to forget that the confined spaces will fill up with deadly smoke very quickly.
Fires do occur in Prison Architect, I've seen at least one prisoner burn a part of visitation because he got angry. A few walls burned down and a few tables got ruined but the situation was easily contained by sending in some firemen and patching the area up. In my opinion, this is a poor representation of the dangers of fire.
I've mentioned in my introduction that I visited a prison. This was a small prison in the Netherlands that could house maybe 100-200 prisoners, it's important to note that the prison was put out of commission in 2007 because it did no longer met the requirements of prisons. Luckily they decided to brand the prison as cultural heritage and any new owners were forbidden from making any significant changes to the building. They had a few CCTV's but the majority of their safety measures (aside from keeping prisoners inside) were to prevent and combat fires. They had panel in the security office that was hooked up to multiple fire detectors, lights would go on to indicate a fire was detected. These detectors worked together with a general loud alarm that would alert people nearby. To combat fires, the prison was outfitted with a huge amount of wall mounted fire-hoses and extinguishers, because in the event of a fire it would be the guards that would act well before firemen would arrive at the scene.
Fires are extremely dangerous, but in Prison Architect they aren't a threat at all. I suggest the following to more accurately portray the importance of fire safety in prisons:
- A new reputation for prisoners: arsonist. These prisoners will try to start fires. Even more so when they are volatile.
- A new item for prisoners to use, by combining booze and a lighter (both present in the game) they can get a weapon: the molotov. Arsonists can use these but these would be a bigger problem during riots.
- Another way for fires to start. Currently I believe that when water and electrical machinery mix, a fire is started. But some fires are caused by damaged electrical hardware or just happen because of short circuits. Fires should have a chance to start when electrical machinery is damaged by prisoners and could have an increased chance to start when the electrical network uses a higher percentage of the total power being generated (being on the last bar would be unwise).
- Fires generate smoke, smoke reduces visibility making it hard for staff and prisoners to find their way. Staying in dense smoke too long will cause unconsciousness followed by death. Naturally this makes tiny hallways a lot more dangerous.
- Remove the mechanic that lets fires destroy those massive concrete walls. The biggest risk in concrete buildings is smoke, well before the building collapses.
- To combat fires, players could install fire detectors. These would go off and cause an alarm when a fire is nearby.
- Even though the prison I visited did not have them, a sprinkler installation isn't uncommon and could be a means to combat fires.
- Last but not least, fire-extinguishers. A wall mounted item that can be used by trained staff to combat fires.
These are just my personal suggestions based on the current state of the game and my visit to a single prison.
----- // Worker Well-being // -----
Another big risk for just about any place that has employees are the employees. People can only work so much, have shifts, have to deal with stress and can get sick. For a game like Prison Architect I feel that most aspects or worker well-being should be ignored, it could get complicated very quickly. However as things stand now, employees are nothing more than mindless drones with no emotions.
First of all, employees should get needs. Maybe not as complicated as prisoners but even guards for example need to eat, sleep and go to the toilet. This could be simulated by having barracks/lockers for your guards or to have shifts, in which a fresh batch of employees arrive every 24, 12, 8 hours to replace the current employees. I can imagine this would spice up things a bit because while the shifts change, your prison is just that much more vulnerable. You could extend this as far as having employees being actual people with names, families, that have to go home, could get stressed or sick. But things could end up being too 'micromanagy' quickly. I feel that just having basic needs would be enough.
I suggest the following for this item:
- Staffrooms need a toilet as well as a kitchen counter. Guards can microwave a quick meal, get something from the vending machine and go to the toilet to fulfill these needs.
- Either add barracks where employees sleep for at least 6 hours, which creates the need for players to create shifts.
- Or add shifts by having employees leave the prison after a certain amount of hours (6/8/12) while new employees arrive and get changed in a lockerroom area.
The next step would be to give employees another 'need' called 'motivation'. The more motivated they are, the quicker they respond, work and deal with situations. Motivation could be influenced in the following ways:
- Give players the option to micromanage the wages of employee groups. Reduce their pay and their motivation goes down, making them less effective (more breaks, walk slower). Increase their pay and their motivation goes up.
- Motivation goes down the more guards and other employees get beaten up by prisoners, could also be implanted as another need called 'fear'.
- Guards that aren't motivated might not bother dealing with prisoners that are destroying stuff.
- Guards that don't get paid enough or aren't motivated might sell items to prisoners or could not confiscate items from prisoners when searched.
I could come up with a lot of other needs and systems, but I feel that the game should not have too much micromanagement. This is all up to the developers of course.
----- // Boilers // -----
The prison I went to had a huge boiler room for heating water that was used to provide warm water to the kitchens, staff rooms as well as to warm up the building using central heating. These boilers were huge, you could fit at least 4-5 full adults inside of them and I believe there were three of these boilers. There were a lot of safety risks associated with it. The system was kind of old fashioned and used a lot of valves. The boiler and all of these valves were safely locked behind multiple strong doors and iron bars to prevent anyone from just messing with these. Once can easily imagine that by turning a few valves the wrong way, one could cause an explosion.
Not really a suggestion, but I could tell it was a very important part of the prison. I figured I'd share it.
----- // Multiple Floors // -----
This is a tricky suggestion. A lot of risks can be found near stairwells, elevators and such. Fire is a lot more troublesome in buildings with multiple floors as it can spread multiple ways and people have to traverse multiple floors before they get outside.
Not only would it add to the complexity of the previous fire suggestion, most prisons I've seen have at least 3-4 floors to them. This makes for a lot of interesting design decisions regarding logistics as well as stairwell placement and room placement.
This however is a pretty big suggestion in terms of coding and AI so I wont go into it any further.
