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Rehabilitation
The warden work that drives discipline, reform, and parole.
Classification, discipline, deterrence, and parole set the rules — a grade over the record, a reform score punishment moves, an order climate, a release decision. Rehabilitation is what a warden actually does day to day to move a prisoner through them. Without it, reform sits still, classification never re-grades, and parole never fires; with it, the whole post-arrest arc comes alive.
It gives corrections the same shape Ward gives psychiatric care — a prisoner interaction mode, warden work, an alert, and an inspect readout — so a warden reforms a prisoner over time and paroles them when they have turned a corner.
The two modes
Both are non-exclusive prisoner interaction modes (the same kind Prison Labor and Ward use), so they stack with each other and with recruit / reduce-resistance.
| Mode | What a warden does | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Rehabilitate | Runs counselling sessions on the prisoner | Reform rises, the reform bar fills, colony order rises |
| Parole when reformed | Releases the prisoner once they are eligible | A paroled colonist, back in the colony |
Set Rehabilitate alone to run the programme and parole by hand when the alert fires; set both for a hands-off "reform, then release" pipeline. A prisoner flagged for parole who is not yet eligible is simply not acted on — the warden waits.
A rehabilitation session
A warden walks to the prisoner and counsels them for about 20 in-game minutes, with Social as the active skill. On completion (never on interruption — you only earn credit for a finished session), one session does three things:
- Corrective discipline — a gentle disciplinary act: reform +0.10, and it raises the colony's order by +0.12. This is the deterrence-up half that punishment alone never triggered — visible corrective justice deters everyone else.
- The reform bar — the visible progress bar fills, by 0.34 × cell quality × skill per session, and it decays −0.08/day, so rehabilitation has to be sustained.
- A memory — the prisoner feels counselled (a small mood lift).
| Input | Range | Depends on |
|---|---|---|
| skill factor | 0.5 … 1.0 | the warden's Social level |
| cell quality | 0.5 … 1.5 | the cell's impressiveness |
| reform per session | +0.10 | fixed |
| order per session | +0.12 | fixed |
Reform reaches the parole bar (0.30) in roughly three completed sessions — faster than a bad cell or a poor counsellor fills the visible bar. So the "Ready for parole" alert keys off the real gate, not the bar you see filling.
Neglect — the teeth
A prisoner you flag for rehabilitation and then never attend hardens, exactly as a ward you don't staff does. Once more than two days pass since the last real session, reform falls −0.15/day and they resent it (a mood hit). This hardening lowers reform directly, not as an act of visible justice — neglect is passive prisonization, so unlike a session it does not raise the colony's order.
Attend the prisoner and the clock resets; flag them and walk away and they slide back toward the record that put them in. "A reform programme you don't staff is worse than none."
Parole — the release that stays
When a rehabilitated prisoner clears the parole gate — reform 0.30 or higher, security grade Medium or below, not already pardoned — the Ready for parole alert names them. A warden set to Parole then processes the release:
- marks the pardon on the record;
- clears the prisoner hold so a former prisoner becomes a free colonist again — a parolee who stays in the colony carrying their record, not vanilla's release that ejects them from the map;
- a grateful memory, and a small +0.03 to order (a lawful release is visible justice too).
The parolee keeps their record, so if they reoffend the policing loop catches them again — recidivism, closing back onto the start.
Discipline — the other lever
Rehabilitation is the carrot; discipline is the stick, and its opposite. Set a prisoner to Discipline and a warden puts them in solitary: harsh discipline hardens them — reform falls — yet raises the colony's order (visible harsh justice deters the rest), and it stings: a mood hit and an on-edge in solitary status. It fires at most once per term (the status blocks re-discipline for about two days), so it holds order without cratering reform in a single day. The tension is the point: lean on discipline to keep order and you make the punished harder to reform.
Classification enforcement
Classification always computed a security grade (Minimum..Supermax); now it is actionable:
- The grade shows on every prisoner's inspect pane — the game tells you who is dangerous instead of leaving you to guess.
- Wing-routing. A wall-mounted security marker grades the cell block it stands in (Minimum..Supermax, set with a gizmo). One marker covers a whole block — a prisoner takes the grade of the nearest marker in range, so you tag a corridor once rather than cluttering every cell. A "Dangerous prisoner unsecured" alert then flags any prisoner held in a wing too weak for their grade, and the inspect pane shows their wing and a MISPLACED warning — move them to a stronger wing. An ungraded wing falls back to flagging an unsegregated Maximum/Supermax pawn.
- Cell safety: a prisoner caged with a dangerous one suffers a mood penalty. Segregate your dangerous prisoners, or their cellmates pay for it — the grade made to matter on the housing side, not only at parole.
Regime — yard, lockup, and visitors
Beyond punishment and reform, the held have a daily life:
- Yard / Lockup schedule. Two timetable blocks set a held pawn's day: Yard allows recreation (with the prisoner recreation need Regime enables, they head out to a rec area), Lockup confines them to the cell and stews their mood. The timetable itself is Prison Labor's — Corrections reads it when PL is present and does nothing without it, so PL stays compatible.
- Visitors. A prisoner or ward patient with family or a bond gets visitors — a friendly party walks in under the game's own visitor AI and congregates by their cell, and the break from isolation lifts their mood. Thematically strongest for a ward patient whose family comes to see them.
Seeing it
Every colony prisoner's inspect pane now carries the corrections readout:
Security grade: Maximum · In solitary · Rehabilitation: reforming (40%) — neglected (3d) · reformed — ready for parole
The grade shows for every held pawn; in solitary while a discipline term runs; the rehabilitation line for a pawn set to reform. And because the colony's order climate otherwise has no readout at all, the same pane surfaces it when it is far enough from ordinary to matter — Colony order: low (28%) — crime pays here / high (71%) — order holds.
What this closes
With rehabilitation in play, the whole post-arrest arc runs: discipline moves reform, classification re-grades as reform rises, deterrence climbs on visible justice (not just falls on crime), parole releases the reformed, and Core's treatment carries the reform bar the same way it carries Ward's recovery. The loop closes back onto disposition — catching, reforming, and releasing one pawn moves the climate every other pawn is judged against.
The whole corrections layer can be toggled off in the mod's settings, like the rest of the suite.
Part of the Institution suite.