Overview
This guide should answer any and all questions about Death Row and how it works in Prison Architect.
Unlocking Death Row
In order to unlock Death Row, hire a lawyer, and pay the $10,000 fee to unlock Death Row.
The Basics
Death Row is a special class of inmates in Prison Architect. They can be male or female depending on the prison you are working. They can also be gang members. They are in prison for a large number of (usually) heinous crimes. They only show up one or two at a time, and can only be housed in special Death Row designated cells. They cannot be put in shared cells. Dormitories or holding cells, even if designated as Death Row, will also not house them.
They are the only class of prisoner that can be killed without negative repercussions if you follow the correct protocol. You can only execute them without liability once they are under a certain clemency rating, as dictated by the state.
You will also need a designated Execution Room with a working Electrical Chair. I also suggest chairs for the witnesses of the execution.
Clemency: How it works and Death Row Appeals
Clemency is how likely your prisoner is to be “downgraded” out of Death Row. In order to Appeal the sentence, your prisoner must go to a “Parole” room and go through a scheduled “Death Row Appeal”. There are three possible outcomes when your prisoner goes in for his Death Row Appeal:
1)The appeal is rejected and clemency goes down.
Your prisoner is still a Death Row Inmate, and their clemency chance will go down by half for every time they unsuccesfully appeal. These appeals can only be done once every four days per inmate. If you have more than one Death Row inmate, another one can appeal the day after the other(s) go through the appeal.
2)The appeal is approved, and your Death Row inmate is now a Maximum Security inmate.
Your prisoner is no longer up for execution, but has still been given a guilty sentence for all their crimes. Now they must serve all the time they have as a “normal” population inmate.
3)The appeal is approved, and your inmate walks the streets again.
Your inmate has been cleared of all charges against them, and is now free to return to society at large. You basically get the finger on this one.
A final note on clemency: the upper limit of clemency that allows you to execute a prisoner without repercussions is 5% unless you research “Execution Liability” ($10,000). Once researched, this number will be doubled to 10%. This limit is where the state will say “We will be liable if it comes out they were innocent, not you.”
The Final Countdown: The Execution Itself
To authorize an execution, click on the condemned inmate. At the bottom of the inmate’s rap sheet will be a big gray button that says: Schedule Execution.
You will now have a list appear on the top left of your screen. It will guide you through the process of the execution.
You must now lock down your prison so the other inmates won’t cause trouble during the execution. All inmates will be escorted back to their cells/dormitories/holding cells. During this time you must also do a check to see if the inmate can get to the execution room without going through any non-Death Row areas; this time is also set to see if the electric chair will draw too much juice and overload the substation.
Once your prison is locked down and the all clear is given on the equipment, you can bring in the witnesses and staff detail. The witnesses include the inmate’s family (if they have any), the victim’s families, and a spiritual leader of the inmate’s choosing. The staff detail inculdes the Chief of Security and the Warden. The staff detail and the spiritual leader will go to the inmate’s cell; the rest of the witnesses go to the execution room and wait for the condemned inmate (chairs are useful here, remember?).
Once your witnesses and staff detail are in place, it is time for the long final walk for the inmate to the execution room. The Staff Detail now walks the inmate to the execution room. Very similar for dogs too.
Once your inmate and Staff Detail are in place, you can now order the execution proper.
The inmate is now dead, and the staff and witnesses can be dismissed. You will then be given the final paperwork about the execution.
If you haven’t botched the execution, you get a nice $10,000 paycheck for all your hard work.
Messing Up: Premature Executions
You went and executed a prisoner, but they were not under the state limit for clemency. Now it has come out that the condemned inmate would have been granted clemency.
Murphy, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do.
You will be fined $50,000 for your negligence. All Death Row Inmates in your prison will be transferred out. Plus, if another botched execution like that happens, you will be sacked and imprisoned in that same prison if failure conditions are turned on. A lot of your prisoners will also riot.
The moral of this story is: Don’t go executing prisoners if their clemency chance is higher than the state limit of liability.
Advanced Material
Death Row inmates do not follow the normal prison regime that your other prisoners have. They will have their mealtimes at the same time as the normal inmates, and will sleep at the times your normal inmates do, but that is where the similarities end. They spend all the rest of their time in lockdown in their cells. For my prisons, I like to give them a 5×5 cell so they can have a 10 grade cell plus some extra trimmings without the room being really crowded: a phone booth(Family need), a prayer mat(spirituality need), and a weights bench(exercise need). They cannot utilize a library, so don’t bother with that. The only rooms that can be utilized by these inmates are the “Parole” room for appeals and the “Visitation” room for their family needs.
You should make a small kitchen and canteen in your death row facility. Although meals are delivered to their cells, this will allow the inmates to have their meals be delivered in a more timely fashion, with a much shorter path from designated canteen to cell. This will prevent overload on any one kitchen in your prison.
Have a full substation dedicated to just the Death Row facility; the last thing you need is a large electrical fire from an overloaded substation.
Try to do the execution during a time when all your inmates in the normal prison population are also in lockdown/already in their cells. I always schedule mine at midnight, as the inmates are going to sleep. Warning: the inmates will not sleep as long as the execution is taking place.
Tips on Constructing and Running A Death Row Facility
- The first rule of building a good death row facility is to separate the entire area from the rest of the prison. Death Row inmates cannot be housed with other inmates, so there is no reason to keep these dangerous prisoners near the other inmates. It is also a prime target for destruction and fires because of the high electrical output. Putting the entire area near the front of the prison is a good idea, as this means less time for witnesses and appeals officials to be walking, and executions go along more quickly.
- Have a separate power substation and water facility within the block to prevent overload of any one part of the prison.
- Set up a kitchen, canteen, visitation, and at least one parole room just for this block. These rooms can be set up with the minimum equipment due to the limited number of inmates you can recieve.
- Usually, 10 cells is more than enough for a cell block.
- A good idea can be to put your armory and/or security room in this area of the prison, as there will be very few inmates who have access to this area. You will also have immediate access to your snipers and guards in case things go south in this block. Have one guard (armed is preferred) patrol the hallways where the cells are, and one patrol the entrance/exit.
- Designate the cells, canteen, parole, visitation, and execution rooms as Death Row Only Deployment. Designate the kitchen, armory/security room, and utilities room as Staff Only Deployment.
- Appeals can only be scheduled from 6-10pm every day. Use the manual override for your programs list to place the Appeals in this time slot in the specific parole room(s) in this cell block.
Fun Facts: Things you may not know
- There is a way to turn prisoners that are causing problems in your prison into DeathRow inmates. Go to the save file of your prison, find the prisoner you hate, and type DeathRow into his Category line of text. Also add in a ClemencyChance line above his skin color line, and set it to 0.00001. When you open up your prison again, the prisoner will become a Death Row inmate with a 0% clemency rating. This does not work with cloud saves, as they won’t be stored on your computer. There is also a mod in the workshop that does this for you.
- Executing a Gang Leader will make all their Gang Members Riot at the same time. This is due to the in-game mechanic of the Gang rioting if a Gang Leader dies under any circumstances.
- The Warden is the head of the Staff Detail in a prisoner’s execution. If you are playing in Warden mode, you have to manually control the Warden so certain steps in the process are completed. These are: assembling the Staff Detail in the prisoner’s cell and leading the Staff Detail and the condemned inmate to the Execution chamber.
- If you schedule the execution as the condemned inmate is taking a shower, you will execute that inmate naked.
