Alpha 9

Central to the new version is the concept of Prisoner Employment, and we've been planning this feature for a

Prison Architect Alpha 9

long time. Prisoners can now perform a variety of jobs around the prison, saving you money on staff and raising money for you by selling goods manufactured by your work force. Prisoners can work in the kitchen, they can clean the prison, and they can work in the laundry and the workshop, both of which are new in Alpha9. They can also take visits from family members in the new visitation rooms.

Employment

Prisoners can now perform different jobs during a new 'Work' regime activity.  Create employment opportunities with the new 'Jobs' button in the Deployment screen.  Prisoners not employed during the 'Work' regime treat it as 'Free Time'. The currently available prisoner jobs are: Laundry, Cooking, Cleaning, Workshop. Rooms must be accessible to all personnel;  Prisoners can't cook if the kitchen is Staff Only. Eventually, you will pick who can work, but for now every prisoner is permitted to work. In future updates, prisoners will be able to learn new skills from working.

Laundry

New rooms and objects have been added to support creation of a Laundry service within your prison Clean prisoner uniforms are distributed around the prison in Laundry Baskets Dirty uniforms are collected up and brought back to the Laundry room, where they are washed in machines Prisoners now get undressed in their cells before Shower Time, and return to their cell after to re-dress They will change into a clean uniform if one is available, leaving behind their dirty uniform for laundry. Prisoners now have a 'Clothing' need that reflects how clean their clothes are Note: Clean prison uniforms will be stored on any table space, or on the floor, in the Laundry

Workshops

You can now create workshops and use them to convert cheap raw materials into trinkets of value Raw sheet metal will be dropped off in your workshops Your Prisoners will use the circular saw and hydraulic press to manufacture car number plates These will be sold at midnight for a profit Note: Sheet metal and License plates will be stored on the floor in the workshop. Build tables if you prefer your rooms to be tidy

Families and Visitation

All Prisoners now have various family members, listed in their Rap Sheet. Some prisoners have no family. Family members will want to visit an inmate from time to time.  You can now create a visitation room, and visitors will start to arrive every day (8am - 8pm) Prisoners can also take visits from their lawyer Note: All bios from old save games will be re-generated to support this. The update post on Steam also stated that in future updates visitation will become a major source of smuggling contraband. 

Cleaning

• Prisoners can now help out with the cleaning of your prison
• New room : Cleaning Cupboard. This is required to assign Prisoners to the cleaning job.
• Janitors and Prisoners will now clean inside individual jail cells, so long as the cell is open to them
• The rendering of decay has been improved - e.g. muddy floors, dirty shower cubicles, overgrown pathways etc.
• Surfaces will now Decay 50% slower than before

Other

• Food Ingredients will now be stored on the kitchen floor if there is no available fridge space
• Older prisoners now have older faces, and are less likely to be incarcerated for certain crimes like Joyriding etc.
• Fences now visually join onto walls better
• Electrical cable and water pipes now come in stacks to prevent flooding your deliveries area
• Fixed: Workshops no longer award you money per square.
• Fixed: The deployment system would not always update correctly, leading to a single grey sector
• Fixed: Crash bug in planning mode when drawing off the edge of the map
• Fixed: Dead staff members will no longer be paid a daily wage
• Fixed: The game would not render correctly on Windows Vista or higher when non-standard desktop DPI settings were used
• Fixed: Prisoners under lockdown in their cells would sometimes leave their cell to go to lunch/yard etc., only to be chased down immediately by guards and returned