Prisoner Realism

Prisoner Realism

Prisoners that actually behave like prisoners. Vanilla prisoners arrest only in purpose-built rooms, break out of lavish cells for no reason, carry magic keys, never clean, and expect five-star treatment. Prisoner Realism rebuilds the whole prisoner experience. Every feature has its own toggle, and anything based on another mod steps aside automatically when you run that mod. ➤ Full feature wiki — every system, number and setting explained: https://rentry.co/gmi5uai2

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Management

• Arrest Here – right-click a downed pawn to imprison them on the spot, no room needed. A grace period stops them bolting instantly.
• Force Feed / medicate – force a carried meal or drug into a prisoner. Food humiliates; medicine doesn't.
• Carry prisoners anytime – pick up any prisoner, downed or not, and place them anywhere.
• Prisoner bed owners – assign a bed; a warden moves them promptly.
• Baby-safe – never targets babies or children by default.

Prison breaks, reworked

Escapes are no longer a flat dice roll. Prisoners weigh mood, their opinion of you, captor strength (turrets, armed guards, wall material), their own combat strength, age, overcrowding, cellmate solidarity and ringleaders.

• Tough but fair – a fed, entertained, well-guarded prison genuinely settles down. Escapes are the price of neglect, not a constant tax.
• No panic stampedes – a breached wall only tempts someone already on the brink. Content prisoners ignore it instead of running into your guns.
• Armed guards – an armed colonist or combat mech nearby stops attempts outright.
• Armed escapees fight – a prisoner with a weapon attacks guards, then the turret covering their route. Unarmed ones just run.
• Will & resistance – ground-down prisoners stop trying. Rioting hardens resistance; breaking out hardens will.
• No magic mining – they bash doors and walls with fists or weapons. Slow and loud.
• Surrender – when a group break collapses, survivors may throw down rather than die.
• They learn – a failed escape means days of waiting before the next attempt. Repeats last longer.
• Assisted breaks – during a genuinely large raid, prisoners on the brink seize the chaos. Their own faction raiding reads as a rescue.
• Dying prisoners – severe malnutrition, bleeding out or disease drops all caution.

Security

• No keys – breakers must bash doors. A high Intellectual+Crafting prisoner can pick their lock, but it snaps in seconds and damages the door.
• Turrets & traps – both hit prisoners who escape, attack or turn violent. Calm prisoners are safe. Breakers smash an in-cell turret first. Combat Extended supported.
• Contraband – unhappy prisoners arm themselves: at a smithy or crafting spot they make knives, maces or clubs; a skilled one pockets 30 metal and works it into a blade over days; and any frustrated prisoner will quietly take a concealable weapon left lying about when nobody's watching. It never shows in their inventory — right-click and Search for contraband is the only way to find it. Miss it and they'll draw it in a riot, an escape, or on themselves.

Prison Commons & Work Areas

Two paint tools in Architect ▸ Zone.

• Prison Commons – prisoners stay in their cell until you paint a shared space. Any cell opening onto it is freed automatically. They walk out to eat, socialize and use recreation there, and wardens stop hand-delivering meals while it's stocked.
• Prison Work Areas – paint a workshop or farm and any prisoner who can reach it runs its bills, sows and harvests its crops (clearing wild plants first), and tidies its floor. They only use materials stored inside their own area, work slower than colonists, need a minimum skill you set, and colonists leave that work alone. Defers to Prison Labor.
• Recreation & cleaning – prisoners get a slow recreation need and tidy wherever they live: cell, barracks or commons.

Psychology & consequences

• Institutionalization – expectations dull over a quadrum. It lingers after release: a heavily institutionalized recruit misses prison and readjusts only slowly.
• Ringleaders – the block's most socially dominant prisoner spreads their mood and stirs up trouble. Isolate them to calm things.
• Rioting – prisoners who can't escape but stay miserable riot instead. Only genuinely unhappy ones take part. Pacifists and Dead Calm pawns act out non-violently.
• Hunger strikes – rioters refuse food, even when starving. Put the riot down or force-feed them; a lone striker holds out until they collapse.
• Solitary confinement – long isolation with no company or recreation breeds resentment, lost social skill, dark traits and despair. Isolating a ringleader has a real cost.
• Desperation break – after a very long stretch of near-total despair a prisoner may finally snap: a violent breakdown (red alert, pauses the game) or a permanent dark trait. If they've hidden a blade they cut their own throat; a loaded gun becomes a shot to the head using its actual ammunition.
• Harmful surgery – only mutilation counts. Prosthetics, xenogerm implants and blood draws spook nobody. Unhappy prisoners may panic before sedation; long-term ones increasingly accept it. Victims resent the surgeon.
• Recruit offer – rarely, a long-held prisoner offers to join for free.
• Recidivism – long after release or escape they may return. Treated well: a grateful visit (recruit, accept silver, or decline). Abused: the same pawn returns with friends for a retaliation strike geared to their faction.

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Compatibility

RimWorld 1.6. Requires Harmony. All DLC supported, none required. Safe to add mid-save. Auto-detects and hands off its overlapping feature to: CPERS: Arrest Here, Prisoners Dont Have Keys, Prisoners Should Fear Turrets, Prisoners Are Not Swines, Lower Prisoner Expectation, Set Owner for Prisoner Beds, Prison Labor, and Prison Commons (Continued). Works alongside Combat Extended (ammo types survive concealment), War Crimes Expanded 2, No Sympathy for Prisoners and Bondage Furniture. RimHUD users: pick the bundled "Prisoner Realism" layout preset. Load after these. Replacing several prisoner mods with this one? The wiki lists every mod it can stand in for with direct links, so you can unsubscribe without hunting through your list.

FAQ

• Performance: no per-frame work; light checks a few times per second over spawned prisoners only.
• Too brutal, or too easy? Use the difficulty presets at the top of the settings — Lenient / Realistic / Brutal retunes everything in one click. Every value is still adjustable underneath.
• Prisoners never break out? Working as intended if they're content, guarded and secure.

Official wiki — every feature, number and setting in full: https://rentry.co/gmi5uai2 Author: Legator. Thanks to the authors of the mods that inspired these systems.