System dynamics: Prison, Inc.

Defining the values, loops, and arcs of the private prison industry.

Our game, tentatively titled Prison, Inc., focuses on the effects of private prisons in the incarceration industry and how its existence as an industry fosters unsafe and unethical conditions for prisoners.

Values

Our game puts players in the role of CEOs of rivaling corporations responsible for building and maintaining a private prison. Players will get contracts with the government, buy amenities, and accept prisoners with the ultimate goal of making the most money by the end of the game. In this way, Prison, Inc. fosters complicity in the system, teaching players how private prisons fail the public and those they’re meant to rehabilitate.

Loops

Gameplay is organized in turns traveling around a central board populated with four types of tiles: Negotiations, Programs, Inspections, and Events. Each tile has a different action/expectation:

• Negotiations refer to the opportunity for players to renegotiate their contracts by drawing Contract cards;
• Programs refer to the amenities provided to prisoners by a prison (contracts will stipulate minimum level programs);
• Inspections refer to the ability of other players to check to make sure their competitors are fulfilling their contract; and
• Events refer to random occurrences that may affect gameplay (for instance, legislation increasing recidivism).

At the end of every turn, they receive feedback by making or losing money as a result of their action. Gameplay continues until all 8 billion dollars allotted by the federal government has been distributed to all players.

This loop of roll, draw, decide aims to reinforce the tension of players intrinsically wanting to rehabilitate prisoners while also extrinsically wanting to make the most money possible.

Arcs

The main arc of Prison, Inc. follows a loose timeline wherein private prisons acquire contracts and house as many prisoners as possible to make the most money while spending as little as possible on in-prison programs. The arc may culminate for each player differently — if they are found to have violated their contracts or they no longer can afford their programs (especially those that focus on rehabilitation), they may end bankrupt. More likely, however, they may end up with profitably overpopulated and underfunded prisons.