Institution: Contraband
Prisoners get hold of things they should not have. Wardens turn the cell over looking for them.
This is the player-facing wiki for Institution: Contraband, a RimWorld 1.6 mod. It documents every mechanic with the real numbers, explains why each one works the way it does, and tells you how to play with them — and against them.
Note on scope. Contraband was recently split. It is now one thing: the physical smuggling loop of a prison. The engine it used to carry — a pawn's criminal propensity, the criminal record, and which pawns count as "in custody" — now lives in Institution: Core, which this mod requires. The response systems (classification, deterrence, discipline, parole, regime) went to Institution: Justice, and the gang network to Institution: Gangs. When this page mentions "the record" or "a pawn's propensity," those belong to Core; Contraband reads them.
The one idea
The whole Institution suite rests on a single sentence:
Every pawn has a criminal propensity on a spectrum — nature (traits) × nurture (circumstance, mood, treatment) — and the colony can police it.
Contraband is the half of that sentence you can hold in your hand. A propensity is abstract until a disposed prisoner files a blade off his bunk, palms a twist of yayo on the way into a cell, or starts digging. Contraband is where the spectrum becomes an object with edges.
Vanilla built the demand and forgot the supply chain
RimWorld already ships a fully-built junkie. Raiders spawn addicted and carrying combat drugs. You down one, capture strips everything, and now withdrawal grips them in the cell. A prisoner already seeks a drug on their own, and already ignores the forbidden flag inside their own cell.
Put a drug within reach of an addicted prisoner and the base game makes them take it. Today. The consumer, the craving, the reach, the ignore-forbidden — all of it already works.
What does not exist is any answer to two questions:
| Vanilla has | Vanilla lacks |
|---|---|
| A prisoner who wants contraband | Any route for contraband to reach the cell |
| A warden with fifteen jobs | A sixteenth called search |
The base game's warden can chat, convert, feed, execute, enslave, release, suppress — and cannot look in a pocket. Contraband builds exactly the missing two halves: supply and search. It does not need to build the junkie, because Ludeon already did.
Concealment is a secret, not an item
This is the load-bearing design decision:
While it is concealed, there is no item.
A hidden shiv is not in the gear tab. There is no icon. There is no stack on a shelf. The player is told nothing. The item does not become a real object in the world until exactly two moments:
- when the prisoner uses it (it appears in their inventory), and
- when a warden finds it in a search (it is confiscated and never becomes an item at all).
Why go to the trouble? Because an item you can see in the UI is not contraband — it's inventory, and there would be nothing to discover and no reason to ever order a search. The whole tension of the system is that you never know. A warden you send to toss a cell might find a blade, might foil a tunnel, or might waste twenty minutes on a prisoner who was hiding nothing — and that empty search still has to cost, or the mere offer of the job would be the discovery.
Read the full lifecycle in Concealment and Intake.
The four supply routes and the one counter
| Route | What it is | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Intake | A captive hides the small contraband they walked in with | Concealment and Intake |
| Improvise | Whittle a shiv from the cell's own furniture | Improvised Weapons |
| Tunnel | Dig out under the perimeter with a filed pick | Tunnels |
| A bent warden | A greedy or over-kind guard smuggles for a prisoner | Corruption |
| The counter | A prioritized cell toss that reads the tells | Warden Search |
And because every guard is a person with their own diligence and their own price, the search is only as good as who you send — see Corruption.
How everything is contraband without a list
Contraband names no items. It recognises three kinds of thing:
- Anything explicitly marked as contraband — the opt-in, with pluggable behaviour a mod can supply.
- Every drug — vanilla's, Vanilla Expanded's, mods that don't exist yet. Hard drugs conceal better (0.75 vs 0.5).
- Every weapon — how well it hides, and where, is decided by its mass. A knife rides on the body; a heavy gun goes under the floor; a minigun (over 10 kg) hides nowhere.
It reads the item's own stats rather than editing anything. Nothing changes another mod's items. Details in Concealment and Intake and Compatibility.
Index
- Concealment and Intake — the secret model, where a thing can hide, the three kinds of contraband, intake on capture, redemption, and how a smuggled vessel keeps its contents.
- Improvised Weapons — the shiv whittled from furniture, how its material carries through, the damage tell, and who reaches for it in a breakout.
- Tunnels — the Prison-Architect dig under the perimeter, which pawns dig, and how a search uncovers the shaft.
- Warden Search — the prioritized search, how tells and the record drive priority, what a search does, and how it feeds back.
- Corruption — Diligence and Corruption from traits and mood, how they scale a find, and the bent warden who looks away or smuggles in.
- Compatibility — the Core dependency, the Foul Play bridge, Justice/Gangs interplay, and the prison mods the suite is tested against.
The suite
Each mod stands alone as an install; together they form one system.
| Mod | Owns | Depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Institution: Core | propensity, criminal record, secured context | base game |
| Institution: Contraband (this) | concealment, intake, shivs, tunnels, search, corruption | Core |
| Institution: Justice | classification, deterrence, discipline, parole, regime | Core |
| Institution: Gangs | gangs as contraband economies | Core, Contraband, Justice |
| Foul Play | vessel + substance + throw framework; the Piss Nuke; bridges its carboy in as contraband | standalone |
| Ward | a ward prison mode | — |
Part of the Institution suite — Core · Contraband · Justice · Gangs, alongside Foul Play and Ward. Each stands alone; together they interlock.