How to tell who lives in a Cell

Is there any way to find out which Prisoner occupies a certain Cell, either by looking at the save or in-game?

If you really really really want to know, you can find it out via the save file, but this requires you to know the coordinates of the cell.

First measure the position of a tile in the cell from the top-left (Figure 1). If you bought a plot of land above or left from your prison, the coordinates might be warped, as I am unsure if tiles keep their x/y-coordinates. Save the game, then open the save file in your favourite text editor. In our case we measured 90 from the left, 48 from the top. Search for "x y" (including the quotes). In our case we search for "90 48" (Figure 2). In our case our room is identified by "i 43" and "u 40730675". The easiest way to find the prisoner is to search for the longer number and continue until you find an entry Cell.u 1234567. In our case the cell is occupied by Anna Baker, a minimum security prisoner who is currently at 65/100 (Figure 3).

It should probably be said that there really isn't such a thing as a "prisoner's cell". There are several systems in place to cause this:

• Prisoners that are sent to solitary get assigned a solitary cell. Their previous cell is now unoccupied.
• The system constantly tries to solve the room quality/prisoner required quality optimization problem. When a prisoner is assigned a cell, the game looks around for prisoners that are better suited for that cell, then swaps the prisoners.

In a thriving prison, with hundreds of prisoners, each day new prisoners get taken in, and assigned a new cell. There are also a steady stream of misconducts, which will cause prisoners to be swapped out.

A common reason to want to know which prisoner occupies a cell, is because that cell is occupied by a gang member. Remember that you can always initiate a cell transfer yourself by selecting a random prisoner, then right-click on the cell you want to move that prisoner to. Now you know exactly which prisoner occupies that cell.

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Figure 1: Measuring the tile

Figure 2: Finding the tile.

Figure 3: Finding the prisoner

As an alternative in game, you can just see who comes to the cell to sleep at night.

If you really, really need to see straight away then you can put the prison into bang-up to return all prisoners to their own cells.