Prisoner Realism — Full Wiki

Prisoners that actually behave like prisoners.

Prisoner Realism is a RimWorld 1.6 overhaul of the entire prisoner experience. 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. This mod rebuilds all of that into something that makes sense — and adds deep new systems for prisoner psychology, escapes, riots, and long-term mistreatment.

This wiki explains every feature in full detail, how each one works under the hood, the exact numbers involved, and how to tune it. It is written for players (beginner to intermediate), not modders.

Requires Harmony. Works with all DLC (none required). Safe to add to an existing save. Every feature has its own on/off toggle and most have sliders. Any feature that overlaps a mod you already run is disabled automatically.

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How to read this wiki

Most systems in this mod work through intervals and multipliers:

• An interval (shown as "X days" or "Never") is the mean time between random events. A lower number = the event happens sooner/more often. "Never" means it cannot currently happen.
• A multiplier / factor changes an interval. A factor above 1.0 makes an event rarer; below 1.0 makes it more common. The mod multiplies many factors together, so several small effects stack up.

You will see three new interval readouts in the prisoner tab (the panel when you select a prisoner), stacked under vanilla's line:

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Management tools

Everyday tools for running a prison. These are quality-of-life features you trigger yourself.

Arrest Here

Turn a downed pawn into a colony prisoner on the spot, without needing to build a prison room first.

• How to use: select a colonist, right-click a downed pawn, choose "Arrest here: (name)". The colonist walks over, spends ~3 seconds restraining them, and they become a prisoner where they lie.
• Perfect for clearing a battlefield full of downed raiders without hauling everyone to a cell.
• Grace period: a freshly arrested pawn will not try to escape for a short time even after they recover and can walk. This stops the silly vanilla behavior of a pawn springing up and bolting the instant the cuffs come off. The grace only counts down while they are up and mobile, so a pawn arrested while downed keeps the full grace after they heal.
• Default grace: 1 day (tunable 0–3 days).

If you run [RH2] CPERS: Arrest Here, this feature disables itself and defers to that mod.

Force Feed / Force Medicate

Keep prisoners and downed enemies alive, or medicate them, using items your colonist is carrying.

• How to use: select a colonist who is carrying a meal and/or a drug, right-click a prisoner or downed pawn. You'll get options like "Force feed (name): (meal)" and "Force-medicate (name): (drug)" — one per item type they carry.
• Meals: only offered if the target's food need is below 90%. Being force-fed food is humiliating, so the pawn gets a small mood penalty ("force fed", about −4 for a while).
• Drugs / medicine: any ingestible drug (penoxycyline, go-juice, etc.) can be force-fed with no mood penalty — you're medicating them, not shaming them. No hunger requirement, so you can medicate a full but sick prisoner.

Carry prisoners anytime

Pick up any prisoner — downed or fully awake — and set them down wherever you like.

• How to use: select a colonist, right-click a prisoner, choose "Carry (name)...", then click a destination cell. The colonist physically carries them there and puts them down.
• Great for repositioning prisoners on demand without waiting for a warden to get around to it.

Set owner for prisoner beds

Assign a specific prisoner to a specific bed, just like colonist beds.

• A "Set owner" button appears on player-owned prisoner beds.
• When you reassign a prisoner to a bed in a different room, a warden is dispatched promptly to move them, rather than leaving it to whenever someone feels like it.

Defers to Set Owner for Prisoner Beds if that mod is loaded.

Target filter (baby-safe)

The Arrest Here and Force Feed options will not appear on babies or children by default, so you can't grab a toddler by accident.

• Two settings toggles let you opt babies and/or children back in.
• Adults are always eligible.

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Prison breaks — the core rework

In vanilla, whether a prisoner tries to escape is basically a flat dice roll based only on movement, genes, and how many doors their cell has. Mood, treatment, and how well guarded they are do not matter at all. This mod replaces that with a system where escapes are weighed against reality.

How it works

The mod takes vanilla's escape interval and multiplies it by several factors. Remember: higher factor = escape is rarer, lower factor = escape is more likely. All the factors below are multiplied together, then multiplied by a global slider.

After all factors multiply, a global "Break frequency" multiplier is applied (default 1.0 — neutral, so the realism factors alone decide). Lower it for more escapes; raise it for fewer.

The design target is that an adequate prison genuinely settles down. A prisoner who is fed, has something to do, sleeps in a decent cell and knows a guard is nearby stacks several large factors at once and will very rarely attempt anything. Escapes are meant to be the consequence of neglect or cruelty — not a constant tax on running a prison at all.

(Earlier versions shipped with this multiplier at 0.5, which doubled escape frequency on top of every factor. If your config still had that exact value it is upgraded to 1.0 automatically; a value you set yourself is left alone.)

Captor strength in detail

The mod scores how well the prisoner is watched:

• Turrets: each active, powered player turret within ~30 tiles adds a big chunk (roughly +3, plus more for expensive turrets). A single covering turret is a serious deterrent.
• Guards: each armed colonist within ~24 tiles adds a moderate amount; unarmed colonists add a little.
• Structure: the strongest wall/door around the cell. A wooden door counts for little; plasteel or a security door counts for a lot.

Prisoner strength in detail

A dangerous prisoner is more willing to gamble on a break:

• Combat: average of Melee and Shooting skill.
• Capacities: Moving and Manipulation.
• Health: overall body health.
• Bionics: each artificial/implanted part makes them more dangerous.

Tuning the factors

Each of the four "big" factors has a weight slider (0–3, default 1) so you can decide how much it matters:

• 0 = that factor is ignored entirely.
• 1 = full normal effect.
• 2–3 = amplified.

That's usually working as intended: a content, well-liked, heavily guarded, weak prisoner genuinely has no reason to run. If you want more action, lower the Break frequency slider, add fewer guards, or worsen their conditions.

Individual (shared-cell) breaks

In vanilla, one prisoner deciding to break can magically pull in prisoners across your whole block, even ones who couldn't possibly know. This mod keeps a break contained to the initiator's own cell — only prisoners actually sharing that cell join in. Distant prisoners each roll their own break on their own schedule.

Desperation — dying prisoners bolt

A prisoner who is genuinely about to die from a condition throws caution to the wind and will try to break out almost immediately — even through heavy fortifications, and even if asleep.

• The urge scales with how severe the condition is (how close to lethal it is), so it's a smooth ramp, not an on/off switch.
• Trivial ailments barely nudge the odds; severe ones ("get me out of here NOW") force a break.
• Applies to any life-threatening condition: severe malnutrition, bleeding out, deadly illness, hypothermia, heatstroke, and so on.
• Toggleable ("Dying prisoners break out desperately").

Armed guards keep order

A prisoner will not dare attempt an escape while an armed, upright guard stands nearby — even out in the open with no walls. They simply wait it out and wander.

• What counts as a guard: an armed colonist, or a combat mechanoid of yours. A lancer parked in the corridor deters exactly like an armed colonist. Worker mechs (constructoids, cleansweepers) have no attack and don't count.
• Default deterrence radius: 12 tiles (tunable 4–30).

A breached wall is not an invitation

Vanilla sends every prisoner running the moment an escape route opens, which got a lot of harmless captives shot. Now a hole in the wall is only an opportunity to someone already looking for one: a prisoner is only allowed to seize it if they are mid-break, in a violent mental state, or their break interval is already at the "on the brink" threshold. A content, settled prisoner ignores it entirely.

Will and resistance

A prisoner who has been worn down stops fighting, and one who fights back gets harder to break:

Armed escapees fight

A prisoner who has got hold of a weapon doesn't jog past your guards. During a break they attack the nearest upright colonist or combat mech within 14 tiles (line of sight for a gun, a reachable path for a blade), and if no guard is in range they go for the nearest active turret covering the route. Unarmed prisoners — and pacifists — still simply run.

• Post a guard by your prison and your captives stay put. Remove the guard and normal escape odds resume.

Assisted / timed breaks

Escapes can feel coordinated instead of random. When a genuinely large raid hits your colony, prisoners who were already close to breaking seize the chaos and make their move at the same time.

• Only fires on a large raid — and "large" is relative to your colony: the raid must be at least 80% of the storyteller's current threat scale. An early-game 400-point raid can qualify; a late-game 400-point trickle can't. (An absolute floor slider filters genuinely insignificant raids, default 300 points.)
• Only prisoners already on the brink join in — those whose break interval is already low (default: 12 days or less).
• Each eligible prisoner rolls a chance (default 50%).
• Rescue bonus: if the raiders are a prisoner's own faction, it reads as a rescue attempt and their chance is multiplied ×2.5 — their friends have come for them.

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Escape mechanics

Once a break actually starts, how do prisoners get out? This section covers the "physics" of an escape.

Prisoners don't have keys

During a break, prisoners cannot simply walk through doors — just like fleeing raiders, they must bash them down. A locked door is a real obstacle.

• Exception — Prison Commons doors: doors the prisoner may open every day (their painted commons block) stay open to them during a break too. A break that starts in the commons already has its doors open — bashing and lockpicking only happen at the perimeter.

Defers to Prisoners Dont Have Keys if loaded.

Exception: lockpicking

A clever prisoner can pick the lock of their own cell door instead of bashing it.

• Pick time scales with Intellectual skill (a genius does it in a couple of seconds; a merely-skilled prisoner takes longer).
• A picked lock is not a permanent free pass. It holds for a short window (default 15 seconds, tunable 5–60), then the forced mechanism snaps: the door takes damage and a colonist has to repair it before the cell is secure again — the same idea as equipment that breaks down and needs maintenance.

Break their way out — no magic drilling

Escaping prisoners do not teleport through walls or instantly mine their way out. Any AI urge to "dig" is converted into what a real prisoner would actually do: physically beating on the wall or door with their fists or whatever weapon they're holding. It's slow, it's loud, and it gives your colony time to respond. (The sapper/instant-mine behavior is stripped out entirely.)

• Toggle: "Break out by bashing (no magic mining through walls)."

Surrender

A group prison break that starts collapsing can end in surrender instead of a massacre — but only when the situation genuinely warrants it:

• Groups of 1–2 never surrender. A lone runner (or a pair) is all-in; the system ignores them entirely.
• Groups of 3+ only consider surrendering once at least a third of the group has been genuinely cut down (dead or downed — pawns who surrendered don't count toward the threshold).
• Once that line is crossed, each remaining breaker rolls a 20–60% chance — shaped by their vitality (wounds and pain push them to give up), age (older pawns fold sooner) and combat ability (skilled or armed prisoners trust their chances). One roll per new casualty, not per second.
• Almost free? A prisoner close to the map edge is very unlikely to quit — freedom is right there.
• Surrender pain threshold slider (default 0.5) sets the pain level that counts as "badly hurt" in the vitality factor.

They learn — failed escapes

A prisoner who tries to escape and fails — surrendered, beaten down, or simply recaptured — has just learned first-hand how tight your security is. They don't shrug it off and try again the same evening:

• Their break interval is multiplied by ×6 immediately after the failure, then decays smoothly back to normal over about 6 days (slider, 1–20).
• Repeat failures last longer. Each subsequent failed attempt lengthens the next cooldown by ~60% (capped at 30 days). A prisoner who has thrown themselves at your walls three times gives up on the idea for a long while.
• Dying prisoners ignore it entirely. The desperation override (severe malnutrition, bleeding out, lethal illness) short-circuits before any factor is applied — someone with nothing to lose will still bolt.
• It clears the moment they stop being your prisoner (recruited or released).
• Toggle: "Failed escape discourages the next attempt".

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Turrets

Turrets fire on dangerous prisoners

Vanilla player turrets never shoot prisoners. This mod lets them open fire on any prisoner who becomes a threat:

• Is part of an active prison break, or
• Is running for the map edge (e.g., after slipping out through a deconstructed wall), or
• Is attacking your colonists, or
• Is in a violent mental state.

A calm, secured prisoner is never targeted.

Defers to Prisoners Should Fear Turrets if loaded. Combat Extended turrets are detected and patched automatically.

Traps catch escapees too

The same rule extends to traps. Vanilla traps won't spring on a prisoner whose faction isn't currently hostile (they "know" the trap is there). With turret targeting enabled, your player-owned traps will spring at full reliability on a prisoner who is breaking out, running for the edge, attacking, or in a violent state — just like a turret firing on them. A calm prisoner still walks over them safely. Uses the trap's own spring-chance stat, and works on modded traps built on the vanilla trap class. Controlled by the same "Turrets fire on dangerous prisoners" toggle.

Smash the cell turret first

If a turret is inside a prisoner's own cell — or anywhere in their connected Prison Commons block — breaking prisoners will attack and destroy it first before making their run. No point fleeing past a shotgun turret that's already shredding you, whether it's in the cell or overlooking the day room.

Turrets and desperation breaks (optional)

There is a separate, off-by-default setting: "Turrets fire on a prisoner mid desperation-break." When enabled, turrets will also shoot a prisoner who is in the middle of a violent desperation break (see below). Left off, they ignore it.

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Prisoner needs

Recreation

Prisoners are people too. They now have a recreation (joy) need and will use joy sources placed in their cell (a horseshoes pin, a TV, etc.).

• The need falls much more slowly than a colonist's, because prisoners understand they're locked up and don't expect constant entertainment. Default: their recreation drains at 35% of a colonist's rate (tunable 5%–100%).
• Your colonists will not wander into a prison cell to use the prisoners' furniture — they have their own rec room.

Cell cleaning

Idle prisoners tidy the filth where they live. They're captives, not swine. Only filth that has settled (not fresh spills), and only when idle.

• Works in an individual cell, a shared barracks, or the Prison Commons — anywhere that counts as prison space.
• No Home-area requirement: they clean their own quarters whether or not you've flagged the prison for colonist cleaning.

RimWorld itself stops treating a room as a prison cell once it grows past ~60 regions (RoomCanBePrisonCell rejects "huge" rooms). That silently switched off cleaning and riots, solitary, overcrowding and ringleaders in large shared barracks. This mod now treats any room holding a prisoner bed as prison space regardless of size, so those systems work in a barracks exactly as they do in a cell block.

Defers to Prisoners Are Not Swines, and to Prison Labor (which already manages prisoner chores).

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Prison Work Areas

A second painted zone, alongside the commons: somewhere prisoners actually work.

Disables itself entirely when Prison Labor is loaded — that mod already provides a prisoner work system, and two of them fighting over the same pawns would be a mess.

Painting one

Architect → Zone gives you Expand Prison Work Area and Clear Prison Work Area (steel-blue, same translucent style as the commons). Paint over a workshop, a walled farm plot, or both.

• Access is everything. Any prisoner who can walk to the area can work in it — through their cell door and the commons. There is no per-prisoner assignment: two cell blocks joined to two different workshops simply produce two different kinds of work.
• Painting a work area grants door access on its own, exactly like the commons, so a workshop next to a cell block is reachable without also painting a commons.
• Like the commons, a work-area room may not touch the map edge — wall your prison farm in.

What they'll do

Each is individually toggleable.

Materials stay in the area

Prisoners only use what's stored inside their own area — steel for ammo has to be in a stockpile or shelf they can reach. This isn't a special rule bolted on: prisoners can only path through doors the commons system opens for them, and every ingredient search in RimWorld requires reachability, so anything outside their block simply isn't a candidate. Any storage works — stockpile zones, shelves, racks.

Finished goods go to the best storage they can reach inside the area; with nowhere to put them they're dropped on the floor, unforbidden, for a colonist to collect.

Colonists won't run benches or tend crops inside a work area — that's the prisoners' job. But they can still haul there, and they can still take materials stored inside the zone when there's none anywhere else. If your only components are in the prison workshop, a colonist will go and get them.

Skill and speed

• Minimum skill sliders (default 6): one for bench work — checked against whatever skill the recipe actually uses — and one for Plants. Set them to 2 if you're desperate, 20 if you only want master craftsmen.
• Each recipe's and plant's own requirements still apply on top, so a prisoner is never handed something they can't actually make.
• Prisoners work at 70% speed by default (slider), being unwilling and unpractised labour.

Willingness

• A prisoner below the work-refusal mood threshold (default 25%) downs tools — mistreat them and the workshop goes quiet. This is its own slider, deliberately well under the riot threshold: ordinary prisoners often sit below 40% mood, and refusing that early would stop most of a normal prison from working at all.
• Farming additionally needs the prisoner's Plants skill to clear your minimum — a pawn with Plants 0 can't sow, even if willing.
• Prisoners who do have work available get a small "useful work" mood bonus (+3). A work prison is a real alternative to a comfort prison.
• Nobody works while breaking out or mid-mental-break.

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Contraband

Prisoners with time, motive and material make weapons. You won't see it coming unless you look.

How they get one

An unhappy prisoner (below ~45% mood) arms themselves by whichever route is open to them. Content prisoners never bother — they have nothing to arm themselves for.

Their Crafting skill sets the quality of anything they make:

Everything must be inside their accessible area, so not storing metal or weapons where prisoners can walk genuinely starves the whole system.

Finding it

It is completely hidden. It never appears in their inventory or gear tab — there is no way to spot it by inspecting a prisoner.

• Right-click a prisoner → "Search N for contraband." A colonist walks over and pats them down.
• A search always finds what's there. You get a message either way: the item is confiscated and dropped on the floor, or "nothing found".
• Caught mid-project, they lose the raw metal instead of a finished weapon — the tell that something was brewing.
• Being searched is humiliating: a small mood penalty that stacks a little with repeat searches, and they blame the colonist who did it. Searching everyone every day has a cost.

Using it

If you never find it, they will use it:

• In a prison break — drawn and equipped the moment the break starts.
• In a riot — drawn as they begin acting out.
• In a desperation break — and this is the dangerous one. With a blade they cut their own throat (several times the damage, aimed at the neck). With a loaded firearm it is a single shot to the head using the weapon's actual projectile — so under Combat Extended the round they have chambered is the round that hits them, with its real damage and armour penetration. An empty gun is used as a club instead.
• Fighting their way out — an armed escapee attacks guards and turrets rather than simply running. See Armed escapees fight.

When drawn, the weapon becomes fully real and visible — equipped, usable, and lootable once they're down.

Contraband is the argument for keeping unhappy, skilled prisoners in wooden or stone cells, and for searching anyone whose mood has been in the gutter for a while.

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Prison Commons

A construction-based tool for controlling exactly where your prisoners are allowed to go — turning a prison from "one big room they all roam" into cells + a shared day room you design.

Prison Commons is enabled by default. It changes prisoner movement across your whole prison, so if you'd rather prisoners roam freely as in vanilla, turn it off in the Management settings tab.

The core idea

• By default (with commons on), a prisoner is confined to their own cell — the room containing their bed. They no longer wander the whole complex.
• You paint a Prison Commons zone (Architect → Zone tab) over the areas you want prisoners to be able to reach.
• The rule: a door opens for a prisoner if at least one side is a painted area (commons or work area), and any un-painted side is one of their own cells.
• You only paint the shared space. Every prison cell whose door opens onto a painted commons is freed automatically — there's no need to paint a tile inside each individual cell.
• A door between a painted area and an un-painted room (a colony corridor, a workshop you haven't zoned) stays shut, so the block is still sealed.
• With nothing painted, no door opens and prisoners simply stay in their cells.

The two tools

In the Architect → Zone tab you'll find two bright-orange tools (matching the vanilla zone-create icon style — the painted overlay itself is a very light orange tint so the floor stays visible):

Don't want a permanent orange tint over your prison? Tick "Hide the commons overlay on the map" in the Management settings tab. The zone keeps working exactly as before — it just isn't drawn. (You can also hide an individual zone with RimWorld's own zone gizmo.)

How to set it up

Just paint the shared rooms — the hallway, dining hall and rec room you want prisoners to use. You don't need to paint anything inside the individual cells, and you can't paint the door tiles anyway (RimWorld won't zone a cell occupied by a building). Any cell that opens onto the painted area is freed automatically.

Worked scenario — cells → hallway → rec room:

When in doubt: if a prisoner should be able to open a door, paint that door. Any door within a commons zone is openable by prisoners.

Why use it

• Recreation: put joy sources in the commons and prisoners finally have a real place to have fun, instead of a cramped cell.
• Overcrowding relief: a commons gives prisoners more space, easing the crowding pressure that drives riots and breaks.
• Ringleaders & solidarity: the commons is where the social block forms. Ringleader mood-contagion and cellmate solidarity happen there — so who you let share a commons matters. Mix in a happy ringleader to lift everyone, or keep a toxic one isolated.
• The trade-off: a bigger shared space makes prisoners happier but also more able to organize. A break that starts in the commons already has its doors open.

Living in the commons

The commons is a real living space, not just an open door:

• Eating: prisoners walk to the commons to eat the food stocked there (and eat at its tables). Wardens see the stocked commons and stop hand-delivering meals to each cell — they only deliver again when the commons can't feed everyone in the block.
• Recreation: prisoners use the joy sources in the commons like any other room of theirs.
• No haul-backs: wardens won't drag a prisoner back to bed for relaxing in the commons — they walk back to their own cell on their own when tired. (You can still manually order an escort.)
• Counts as prison space: the whole painted block is treated as part of the prison — a prisoner in the commons is not "escaping".
• Open-air yards work. A commons doesn't have to be roofed. Wall in an unroofed courtyard, paint it, and prisoners can use it as an exercise yard — which also satisfies an outdoors need if they have one (from Biotech genes or another mod). The only hard rule is that a commons room must not touch the map edge, since that would hand them the exit.

Furniture ownership

• Colonists will not use furniture placed in a prison cell or a commons — no eating at commons tables, no playing on commons recreation. That furniture is for the prisoners.
• Prisoners keep full access to joy sources in their own cell and commons.

Because a commons counts as prison space, anything inside it becomes prisoners-only — including a nutrient paste dispenser whose dispensing side falls in the zone. Two ways to get it back:

1. Clear the commons paint from that cell with Clear Prison Commons (the tool only paints floor cells, so it's usually the tile in front of the dispenser).
2. Untick "Commons furniture is prisoners-only" in the Management settings tab — colonists may then share commons tables, dispensers and recreation. Furniture in an actual cell (a room with a prisoner bed) stays prisoners-only either way.

If you run Prison Commons (Continued), this built-in system disables itself and defers to that mod (the Compatibility tab in settings shows the detection). Use whichever you prefer.

Debug: dev mode adds a "Log commons door status" action (Prisoner Realism category) to inspect a prisoner's commons state.

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Prisoner psychology

This is the heart of the mod: a layered model of how imprisonment and mistreatment affect a prisoner's mind over time.

Institutionalization

Fresh prisoners are angry and demanding. Over time behind bars, they adjust to prison life and their expectations dull.

How it grows

A hidden, harmless condition builds up while imprisoned:

• Reaches full strength over roughly one quadrum (~15 days) of continuous imprisonment.
• It is invisible on the health tab and never lethal.

What it does — expectations

While a prisoner, institutionalization lowers their expectations (the thing that drives so many mood penalties). At full strength it drops expectations by up to three whole stages — a chronically-imprisoned pawn stops demanding luxury.

The catch — it lingers

Institutionalization is not wiped when the prisoner is recruited or released — the conditioning walks out with them. This has two consequences:

• A heavily institutionalized ex-prisoner who becomes a colonist suffers a "misses prison" mood penalty — they struggle to reintegrate into free life.

• If that pawn is imprisoned again before it fades, they resume right where they left off — they slip straight back into prison life.

Readjusting to freedom

Once free, the conditioning wears off — and the deeper it runs, the longer it takes. A pawn recruited after a short stint sheds it in a day or two; someone who served a full quadrum stops suffering the "misses prison" mood after roughly a week of freedom and clears it entirely within about a month. The fade starts slow and accelerates as they readjust. When it reaches zero, the hediff disappears entirely.

Defers to Lower Prisoner Expectation if loaded.

Ringleaders

The most socially dominant prisoner in a block acts as an instigator and sets the tone for everyone.

• Threshold: a prisoner with Social skill ≥ 8 counts as a potential ringleader.
• Instigation: their presence shortens the whole block's break and riot intervals — the higher their Social skill, the stronger the pull (down to about ×0.65 at Social 20).
• Mood contagion: the ringleader's own mood spreads to their cellmates:
  • A cheerful ringleader lifts the block (about +4 mood to the others).
  • A bitter, miserable ringleader drags the block down (about −5).
• The ringleader themselves is not affected — they are the influence.
• Counterplay: move the ringleader into an isolated cell. With no one to instigate, the block calms down, and the ringleader alone loses their audience.

A high-Social prisoner is a double-edged sword. Keep them happy and they'll boost the whole block; let them rot and they poison everyone. Or isolate them entirely.

Solitary confinement toll

Isolating a troublemaker (like a ringleader) is no longer free. A prisoner kept in true solitary — alone in their cell, with no recreation source in it — slowly deteriorates. This is a long, progressive decline through three tiers, not an instant penalty; the effects only appear after a decently long time and get worse the longer the isolation drags on. Getting company or a recreation source in the cell reverses it (about twice as fast as it builds).

A single-occupant prison cell (no other prisoner sharing it) with no usable joy source inside — an unpowered or broken-down TV entertains nobody, so it doesn't count. And a cell connected to a Prison Commons (a door the prisoner may open) is never solitary: commons access is the opposite of isolation. Add a cellmate, a working recreation item, or a commons connection and the toll fades.

Short (first days to about a week)

• The recreation annoyance already built into the mod (their joy need drains with nothing to spend it on).
• Resentment: a growing opinion penalty toward every colonist — they blame their captors for leaving them alone.

Medium (a long while)

• Stronger recreation cravings and resentment.
• Small chance to gain the Pessimist trait (won't happen if already Depressive; replaces Sanguine/Optimist).
• Small chance to lose 1 point of Social skill.
• Riot chance rises slightly.

Long (a very long time)

• Small chance to gain the Depressive trait (replaces Sanguine/Pessimist/Optimist).
• Small chance to gain the Recluse trait (requires Biotech).
• Small chance to lose 3 points of Social skill.
• Break chance drops moderately (they lose the will to escape).
• Riot chance rises slightly (a sense of unfairness).
• Despair builds much faster (see Desperation breaks) — deep solitary is the fastest road to a total breakdown.

This is a cruelty-has-a-cost system. If you never keep prisoners in bare, empty solitary cells, you'll never see the harsher effects. Put a recreation source in the cell, or give them a cellmate, and the toll fades.

Rioting

Sometimes escape is simply hopeless — heavy weapons, turrets everywhere, a fortified cell. A miserable prisoner who can't run doesn't magically become content. They riot instead.

When a riot happens

Two conditions must both be true:

1. Escape is hopeless — their prison break interval is very high (the cell is too well fortified to break out of).
2. They are still miserable — mood below the riot threshold (default 40%).

The "riot pressure" is a slow, smoothed build-up (it eases in over time rather than snapping), so the Riot break interval in the prisoner tab gives you warning as it climbs.

What a riot looks like

A rioting prisoner:

• Goes berserk (attacking whoever is nearby, including cellmates),
• Picks social fights with other prisoners,
• May drag a cellmate into the riot with them.

A riot fires a red, game-pausing alert just like a prison break.

Both the rioter and any cellmate dragged in must be below the riot mood threshold (default 40%). A content prisoner is never pulled into a riot just for sharing a cell with an angry one. Likewise, a desperation break will not fire while a prisoner's mood has clearly recovered — despair keeps draining away instead.

Hunger strikes

Rioting prisoners also refuse to eat — and the protest outlives the berserk fit itself. A striker will not feed themselves even when starving.

• A lone striker has nobody to fold with, so they hold out to the bitter end — feed them or let them collapse.
• Force-feeding sustains them but does not break the strike. Keeping a determined striker alive is an ongoing cost, not a one-click fix.
• Toggle: "Rioters go on hunger strike" (under Rioting).

This is self-limiting: malnutrition downs a prisoner well before it kills them, and being downed ends the strike — so a hunger strike costs you warden time and medicine, not a corpse, as long as you notice it.

A prisoner who is incapable of violence never berserks and never starts a social fight — that includes the Dead Calm gene, the Pacifist gene, and "incapable of violence" backstories. Instead they act out non-violently: an insulting spree, or sulking if that isn't possible. Riot pressure still means something for them, it just can't turn into bloodshed. The same rule applies to the harmful-surgery panic.

Tuning

Desperation breaks

The darkest, last-resort system. After a prisoner has been mistreated for a very long time, they may finally snap completely.

How it builds

A hidden "despair" level accumulates slowly and only under sustained misery:

• It builds while the prisoner's mood sits below the despair threshold (default 20%).
• It recovers (faster than it builds) whenever conditions improve — so a genuine long stretch of cruelty is required to max it out.
• The Desperation break interval in the prisoner tab counts down as despair deepens, giving you a clear warning.

The break itself

Once despair bottoms out, a weighted roll decides what happens (and there is always a chance nothing happens yet). Only adult prisoners with a normal mind are affected.

• A trait-gain outcome fires a red alert but does not pause.
• The violent break fires a red alert and pauses the game.
• After any outcome there is a randomized cooldown (4–8 days) and despair is partially relieved, so breaks never chain back-to-back and you get a window to fix conditions.

The violent break

During a violent desperation break the prisoner has a fit of self-directed violence, striking at their own head with whatever is in their hand (or their bare hands) while standing — they do not lie down.

• Blows land in a realistic, spaced-out rhythm (roughly one every 2 seconds), over 4–7 hits, giving you time to react.
• How to stop it: send a colonist to beat the prisoner unconscious (down them). The moment they go down, the fit ends. This is the intended way to intervene.
• A prisoner with no working hands/arms cannot do this, so that outcome is removed from their pool.

Desperation breaks are meant to be rare and extreme — they only ever appear after a very long period of terrible treatment. If you treat prisoners even moderately well, you will likely never see one. All of it can be turned off or tuned.

Harmful surgery reactions

Prisoners hate being cut up. This system reacts to any harmful operation — organ harvesting, execution, or amputating/replacing a perfectly healthy body part.

What counts as "harmful"

Only mutilation — surgery that takes a healthy body part — triggers any of this:

This means a prisoner never panics over a routine or additive operation — implanting a purely cosmetic gene, for instance, is not treated as mutilation.

Willingness & panic

• A content, trusting prisoner lies down and waits for surgery without complaint.
• They get used to it. The more institutionalized a prisoner is, the calmer they are about the operating table — panic chance drops to as little as a quarter for a fully institutionalized long-termer.
• An unhappy prisoner may panic into a violent mental break right as the surgeon comes to sedate them — before they can be put under. The angrier they are, the higher the chance.
• "Content" is measured by a blend of mood (60%), opinion of the colony (25%), and institutionalization (15%).
• Max panic chance slider (default 50%) sets the ceiling; the actual chance scales down the happier they are.

If an unhappy prisoner panics, the practical result is that you often have to down them first (they thrash off the table), then operate on the downed pawn.

Relationship fallout

After a harmful surgery on a prisoner:

• The victim bears a heavy grudge against the surgeon (about −60 opinion, lasting ~30 days).
• Every other prisoner in the colony resents that surgeon too (about −20, ~15 days). Butchering your captives has social consequences.

This system recognizes War Crimes Expanded 2 torture operations as harmful surgeries.

The recruit offer

Every so often, a prisoner who has been held for a very long time comes around to colony life and offers to join.

• Requirements: heavily institutionalized (well settled into prison life) and recruitable — an unwaveringly loyal prisoner will never make this offer.
• Rarity: mean ~30 days between possible offers (tunable 5–120).
• Accepting the letter recruits them instantly and for free. Decline and life goes on.

Recidivism — the ones who come back

Your treatment of a prisoner doesn't end when they leave. Long after a prisoner is released or escapes, the exact same pawn may return — closing the loop on your whole treatment system.

The realistic delay

Nobody comes back overnight. First they have to get home, then rest and reintegrate with their faction, then decide to make the trip, then actually travel back. So there is a long minimum delay (default 25 days, plus randomness) before a return is even possible, and then it's still only a small chance — with 30 prisoners cycling through, most will never return.

Grateful return (treated well)

If the pawn left with a good opinion of your colony and was released (a kindness, not an escape), they may come back grateful. Institutionalization feeds into this: a heavily institutionalized ex-prisoner "misses prison" — they're much more likely to come back asking to rejoin (even with merely neutral feelings about you), and far less likely to return for revenge. They don't want to burn the place down; they want back in. You get a letter with three choices:

Vengeful return (abused)

If the pawn left angry (a poor opinion of the colony), they may come back for revenge — the exact same pawn (same age, skills, traits and backstory, now healed and tended after weeks away), leading a small retaliation strike of 2–3 raiders: them plus one or two friends they rallied, who show up as their old friends in the relations tab. It behaves like a small raid, not a full storyteller event.

• If their faction wasn't already hostile, coming back to attack sours relations to hostile — you made an enemy.
• Escaped prisoners are more likely to retaliate than released ones — letting someone go is a kindness that cools the grudge.
• Tribes are less likely to bother (they lack the weaponry).
• The strike is geared to the pawn's faction type:

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The prisoner tab at a glance

When you select a prisoner, three interval lines tell you their state of mind:

If all three say "Never", that prisoner is stable — content enough, or securely held with no despair built up.

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Settings reference

The mod's settings are split into four tabs, with a difficulty preset row above them that stays visible on every tab.

Difficulty presets

One click retunes every slider in the mod — break, riot and desperation frequency, mood thresholds, recreation drain, surrender, guard radius, escape setback, recidivism and more.

• Feature on/off toggles are never changed by a preset. It only adjusts how hard the systems are, not which systems run.
• Adjust any slider afterwards and the label reads Custom. Click a preset again to snap back.
• Clicking Realistic is the quickest way to restore every default value.

Management tab

• Arrest Here (toggle)
• Force Feed / Force Medicate (toggle)
• Carry prisoners anytime (toggle)
• Set owner for prisoner beds (toggle)
• Prisoners clean their cells (toggle)
• Prison Commons (toggle, on by default)
• Hide the commons overlay on the map (toggle)
• Commons furniture is prisoners-only (toggle, on by default)
• Prison Work Areas (toggle) + Bills / Growing / Hauling (toggles)
• Minimum skill for bench work, Minimum Plants skill (sliders, default 6), Prisoner work speed (slider, default 70%), Refuse to work below this mood (slider, default 25%)
• Allow targeting babies / children (toggles)
• Arrest-here grace period (slider, 0–3 days)

Breaks & security tab

• Prison break rework (toggle)
• Individual / shared-cell breaks only (toggle)
• Break out by bashing (toggle)
• Dying prisoners break out desperately (toggle)
• Armed guard nearby stops escape (toggle)
• Ringleaders (toggle)
• Prisoners don't have keys (toggle)
• Skilled prisoners can lockpick (toggle)
• Turrets fire on dangerous prisoners (toggle)
• Break in-cell turret before escaping (toggle)
• Prisoners can surrender (toggle)
• Assisted breaks during a large raid (toggle)
• Failed escape discourages the next attempt (toggle)
• Contraband — prisoners hide weapons (toggle), Contraband rarity (slider, default 20 days)
• Break frequency (default 1.0, neutral), Failed-escape deterrent days (default 6), Armed-guard radius, Lock hold time, Surrender pain threshold (sliders)
• Assisted break: min raid points, brink interval, chance per prisoner (sliders)
• Break factor weights: Mood, Relationships, Captor strength, Prisoner strength (sliders)

Psychology tab

• Prisoner recreation (toggle)
• Institutionalization (toggle)
• Rioting (toggle)
• Rioters go on hunger strike (toggle)
• Solitary confinement toll (toggle)
• Desperation breaks (toggle)
• Turrets fire mid desperation-break (toggle, off by default)
• Panic before harmful surgery (toggle)
• Prisoners resent surgeons (toggle)
• Recruit offer (toggle)
• Recidivism (toggle)
• Recreation fall rate, Riot frequency & mood threshold, Desperation frequency & mood threshold, Surgery panic chance, Recruit offer rarity, Recidivism chance & minimum delay (sliders)

Compatibility tab

A live read-out showing which supported mods are currently detected (green) or not loaded (grey).

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Dev / testing tools

Enable Development mode in RimWorld's options, open the debug actions menu, and look under the "Prisoner Realism" category. Each is a click-then-select-a-pawn tool:

These are the fastest way to see the systems in action without waiting.

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Compatibility

RimWorld 1.6. Requires Harmony. All DLC supported, none required. Safe to add to an existing save. Removing mid-save is mostly clean (the hidden conditions simply drop with vanilla's normal handling).

The mod detects the following and adjusts automatically — either handing off an overlapping feature, or extending its patches to cover the other mod:

Load order: load Prisoner Realism after Harmony, the DLC, and any of the mods above.

Mods this one can replace

Prisoner Realism rebuilds all of the systems below in a single mod. If you'd rather run just this one, here is every mod it can stand in for, with a direct link — so you can unsubscribe from them without hunting each one down in your list.

Every one of these is detected automatically. Keep any of them installed and Prisoner Realism simply stands down on that feature — nothing breaks, nothing doubles up. The list above is only for players who want to consolidate.

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FAQ

Does this hurt performance?
No. There is no per-frame work. Heavy calculations only run when the game already checks whether a prisoner wants to escape (a rare event). Light background checks run a few times per second and only iterate spawned prisoners — negligible even in a huge prison.

My prisoners never break out. Is it broken?
Almost certainly working as intended — they're content, well-guarded, and secure. Lower the Break frequency slider or worsen their conditions for more action.

A prisoner is dying but won't escape.
Only severe, life-threatening conditions trigger the desperation-to-escape override. A little hunger won't; severe malnutrition or bleeding out will.

Is any of this too brutal / can I disable it?
Every single feature has its own toggle, and every system has frequency and threshold sliders. Turn off anything you don't want.

Does it work on mechanoid prisoners or Anomaly entities?
The psychology systems (mood, riots, despair, institutionalization) cleanly skip mechanoids and mindless entities that lack a mood — they only apply to normal humanlike prisoners.

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Prisoner Realism — by Legator. Thanks to the authors of the mods that inspired these systems.