Beware Intake Levels
If you’re just getting started with Prison Architect, there’s a good chance you’ll see a message alerting you at the top left that you have prisoners on the way in a certain amount of hours. You have to make sure your prison can accommodate these prisoners, as a holding cell only goes so far and keeping too many of them within one is a sure fire way to start a riot.
Luckily, you don’t have to live life like the I Love Lucy chocolate episode; you can set the level of inmates. Yes, accepting new ones, in large quantities, does give you extra cash each day. But don’t go crazy if you don’t have the cell blocks just yet. Go into the Reports section of the game (notebook on the bottom right) and click on the Intake tab. Here, you can set it to whatever number you want. I suggest only going with maybe five extra prisoners. Five in the holding cell for a bit is fine, just beware forgetting that you have the intake on, as that’s easy to happen.