NOTE: THIS IS A COMPILATION OF SUGGESTIONS. SOME OF IT WILL BE REPEATED OR MUDDLED, IT WAS NOT ALL WRITTEN AT THE SAME TIME.
So, if we have day-long sentences, with a maximum of 3 or 4 days, we can have the hours decrease offline. If we also use the "halving" system, it encourages people to roleplay to shorten the general overall sentence. We could also incorporate work scripts to decrease the sentence as well - if you're doing a script job in the prison, such as delivering mail, working in the canteen, working in the workshop, and earning commissary, you earn points to an early release. The most lucrative way to earn money or get out of prison is not by waiting until your time is up, but by engaging in roleplay and becoming enveloped in the prison atmosphere.
In addition to that, you make a parole system that paroles literally anyone so long as they haven't violated their parole in the past. If they've already served 50% of their time (or worked towards it), they can parole. The parole officers keep in touch for twice the time the prison sentence as initially meant to be. So if you were sentenced for 4 days, parole keeps in touch for 8. This way, there's an active parole component to the DOC and it encourages people to apply to the DOC. DOC is responsible entirely for apprehending parolees, up to and including breaching their house. Make them full-time peace officers with state authority but only for parolees on the outside and other criminals they witness. They won't patrol, but they will keep in touch with parolees when parolees are online. Make the parole system as inundated and full-up as possible so they have shit to do. This keeps people interested in DOC. Offer exterior work for DOC that is meaningful, community services, exterior operations, exterior investigations into gangs that supply prison gangs, etc. The intention behind the expanded opportunities here is to attract good roleplayers and maintain very high standards of roleplay within the department - in this way, standards do not need to lower in order to find people willing to adopt to a boring system. One of the biggest crippling problems about DOC on LSRP was that the LEO factions had much more to offer - this meant good roleplayers were not enticed to apply, and therefore it often meant that bad roleplayers would fill the ranks of the faction. With good roleplayers filling the ranks, they will provide interesting roleplay to the prisoners. The most ideal DOC does not focus on punishing roleplayers in the prison, but promoting roleplay and creating roleplay. This doesn’t mean working with prison roleplayers on an IC basis, but turning a blind eye so that interesting prison roleplay can happen. The investigatory section in the prison, for example, should not focus on shutting down prison gangs because prison gangs give them a job to do. They can focus on crippling their outside assets by IC means, but by no means should they be motivated on an OOC basis to stack a casefile up so they can enact a mass-isolation. Instead, they should be motivated to provide atmosphere to the prison. It shouldn’t be oppressive, but it shouldn’t be too lenient. It should be enough to let the inmates have the idea that they run the prison, to an extent like real life.
So basically, we can have day-long sentences but the player can make an active effort to work down their sentence by hours or 30 minutes by doing script-based work in addition to parole. Let's say you work down half the sentence - the amount of work you do is incrementally decreased due to the fact you're nearing the end of your sentence, so instead of 30 it's 15 minutes or 5 minutes each cycle of work. This incentivizes roleplay by regular players who are just passing through. People interested in the prison gang aspect could prey on those who do these regularly, offering an interesting aspect to the roleplay dynamic.
This shouldn't be difficult to script. And it'll provide a very interesting aspect for people joining DOC. Rather than DOC being the sub-par roleplayer faction, decent roleplayers will be attracted by the offers it presents. Directly mirror it to the real life CDCR. Let them have fugitive apprehension teams, work closely with other departments, and share information. People will definitely be attracted to that idea and want to do character development around that central theme. I’m certain prison roleplayers would enjoy having a DOC that actually fosters and promotes their brand of roleplay, too.
I think implementing a DOC faction should take second priority in terms of legal factions. As soon as the server launches and SFPD and SFFD are off the ground, start work on a SADCR faction.
One thing I’d also like to see in a DOC faction is room for inmates to have a say - this doesn’t mean give them access to confidential information, but to actually take their opinions into account with policy change that directly affects them. This means sanctioning a very active prisoner forum on a DOC forum. It’s a two-way road of roleplay - if one party isn’t willing to do RP, then the other party will suffer. The best means of having engaging roleplay in a prison environment is working out and compromising on issues.
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In real life the CDCR chases suspects and arrests high-risk warrant suspects. To have a successful DOC you will need a very active outside component or nobody will be interested, or only people who have been rejected from SFPD will be interested. By maintaining a high standard and allowing people to do interesting and enticing roleplay, good roleplay will be a cornerstone of the faction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Department_of_Corrections_and_Rehabilitation#Fugitive_Apprehension_Team
I'd like to also suggest that if the prison does become a thing on the server, we don't use the cliche military base. Leave that a military base, develop a prison elsewhere - make it with a brand new exterior and interior. If it HAS to be the military base, don't recycle old shit. That'd be great.
I'd personally like to see probation/parole offered multiple times and previous sentences not taken into account aside for sexual/very violent offenders or rulebreakers who have /q'd on the parole officers in the past. Probation/parole shouldn't be offered if someone has violated a certain amount of times, and whichever agency handles parole/probation should be permitted to set their own regulations for what parolees need to do. I want to see an inundated system that sees huge recidivism rates and offers interesting roleplay - there need to be an active parole unit for whichever agency handles it that meets with parolees. In addition, for people who request prison time, they should be able to "parole" out of the sentence voluntarily at request. In addition, whichever agency handles parolees should be able to apprehend them on their own with their own fugitive teams if they violate.
Basically, inundate the system with parolees as much as possible - the terms for this, though, would also tie into my longer prison sentences suggestion. Day-long sentences that pass over time out of the game, but people should be permitted to release early/parole and time should go by quicker when they're in-game. In this way, every aspect of the correctional system is focused on roleplay - people won't namechange if they can parole out, for instance, and this promotes continuity.
Whatever agency handles corrections should also be full-time peace officers and be permitted to arrest people on their own. This doesn’t mean the DOC should have their own TAC channels, if anything it means they’ll use outside resources more often - you could stipulate regulations to include them only at the back of convoys or let other agencies do most of the ground work, but the DOC should be permitted to pursue parolees. In addition, if a prison investigation leads investigators within the prison to determine an outside source is selling contraband, the prison investigators should contact whichever department has primary jurisdiction and commence joint casefiles on investigating the situation.
I could provide countless anecdotes and horror stories about a DOC that isn’t fostered correctly or has too many bad roleplayers in it. Frankly, correctional roleplay isn’t that complicated if you look at it from a pragmatic point of view - the most effective means of ensuring an active, thriving system is by opening up the dialogue from within the faction to include anyone within the prison. Prisoners need to be able to provide input the same as DOC staff. A large decision shouldn’t be made without their consultation if it directly affects the atmosphere they roleplay in. The DOC should not view prisoners disagreeing with their decisions as a slight or brush it off because they don’t “know” about correctional RP - some members of prison gangs are more experienced with prisons than any member of a correctional agency. It is as big of a labor to maintain an active prison gang as it is to maintain an active correctional department, and therefore it is counterproductive almost entirely to establish a clear border between the DOC and prison roleplayers. It is incredibly common for people in legal factions to believe that they are any different from illegal roleplayers. This fact should be established as false in every legal faction - they are on the same footing as everyone else, and they should work with people in their place of roleplay to ensure a quality atmosphere. If this is not established, then the server is simply a glorified cops and robbers server where the criminals focus on getting away and the cops focus on catching the criminal. There is no substance to that, and it is frankly not enjoyable. Roleplay isn’t a singleplayer game.
The intention here is to make the DOC on equal footing in terms of roleplay and rule standards as the SFPD with a more central focus on the prison and felons in the state, but with unique enough roleplay to attract alternative characters.
