History Main / GetIntoJailFree

* ''Literature/CHERUBSeries'': In book 3, ''Maximum Security'', TeenSuperspy James Adam's assignment is to [[TheInfiltration go undercover in]] an Arizonan [[UsefulNotes/AmericanPrisons maximum-security juvenile prison]] and engineer the escape of himself and one of the juvenile inmates. The plan is that the inmate he is helping them escape will lead them to his fugitive mother, a wanted international black-market arms dealer. He does this by posing as a juvenile with a felony record, which is faked by the FBI.

* In his final novel, ''Literature/{{Quiller}}'' discovers a witness who has evidence that can bring down a high-ranking boss of TheMafiya has been thrown into TheGulag. He gets himself sent there too (though only by faking the conviction papers) even through [[TheAlcatraz no-one has ever escaped before]].

** In "Prisoner's Dilemma", a government assassin is ordered to kill John Reese, who is being held on Rikers Island. The assassin immediately draws his gun in the middle of New York and starts FiringInTheAirALot, then surrenders quietly to police.

* ''Series/ShadowAndBone''. Once he's assigned to the First Army, the first thing Malyen Oretsev does is look up his childhood friend Alina Starkov, only to be told she's been thrown into the brig for striking the quartermaster after he insulted her. Mal looks up the quartermaster and decks him, both getting payback on her behalf and ensuring he'll be thrown into the same brig. Of course she'd have been released eventually, so it's presented as a FriendshipMoment that he'd do this.
* In the PrisonEpisode [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E19FolsomPrisonBlues "Folsom Prison Blues" (S02, Ep19)]] of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', the Winchesters get deliberately caught so they can remove a ghost haunting the prison. The warden was the one who called them in, which helped.
* ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles''. Vick finds one of his targets has been thrown into jail, so he follows suit by the simple method of walking up to a group of police officers and punching one of them. Of course being a Terminator he can get out at any time just by knocking the cell door off its hinges. Notably, this one manages to get around the big issue of being sent to the same area as the prisoner in question, because the target is in temporary holding, just like Vick would be when assaulting a cop. Once he's inside, he can literally just rip the doors off the walls until he finds his target.

* ''Series/{{Arrow}}''
** In "Tremors", the guards at Blackgate Prison laugh at their latest inmate who was caught robbing a store across the road from a police station. Turns out he's been paid to smuggle WolverineClaws [[TreasureChestCavity inside his body]] so Bronze Tiger can escape.
** In "Keep Your Enemies Closer", John Diggle's ex-wife is in a prison in Russia, so Oliver Queen's friend in the [[TheMafiya Bratva]] provides Diggle with a bag of drugs and arranges for him to be arrested. Once in prison, a guard on the Bratva payroll is meant to get him to where his ex is being held.

* In the ''{{Series/Castle}}'' episode "Witness for the Prosecution", Castle gets himself purposefully thrown in jail on a "contempt of court" charge so he can have a private conversation with the defendant of a murder trial, without her lawyer being present.

* ''Series/{{Constantine}}''. In Part 2 of "The Saint of Last Resorts", Chas needs to get inside of the prison. After floundering it for a bit, he says "screw it" and punches the guard. He gets his ass kicked, but it works.
* The ''Series/CriminalMinds'' episode "Fatal" kicks off at a police station where a man barges in begging to spend the night because he received a death threat. Since said threat is an anonymous note, he isn't taken seriously and the officers there tell him to go to a hotel. He grabs a trash can and flings it at an officer, who now obligingly arrests him. It didn't help. He'd already been poisoned with arsenic, so he's found dead in his cell the next morning.
* ''Series/DoctorWho''. At the start of "Revolution of the Daleks", the Doctor has been incarcerated in an asteroid prison that even she can't get out of. Fortunately her old friend Jack Harkness finds out she's there and commits a few crimes (maybe more than a few) to get himself incarcerated [[AssShove along with his escape equipment]]. Apparently it took nineteen years for him to work his way to an adjourning cell, but as they're both time travelers this isn't much of a problem plotwise.
* ''Series/DueSouth''

* ''Series/{{Fargo}}'': In "Eating the Blame", Lester punches a cop in order to get arrested and away from Numbers and Wrench. Numbers and Wrench later stage a bar brawl and get arrested and placed in the same cell as Lester.

* ''Series/JackOfAllTrades''. In "Croquey in the Pokey", when Governor Croque gets thrown into jail for an attempted assassination of Napoleon, Jack has to follow suit to protect him from every thug he's ever sentenced.

* ''Series/{{Janus}}''. At one point [[EvilMatriarch Shirl Hennessey]] is so tired of her crazy family she's willing to go to jail rather than fight the charges when she's arrested carrying a concealed weapon. She tells her barrister Michael Kidd that she doesn't have money to pay him, so he offers to defend her for free, leading to an amusing scene where she has to repeatedly stop Kidd in court as he tries to get the sentence reduced.
* In ''Series/{{Justified}}'' Boyd Crowder assaults a US Marshal in a federal courthouse in front of dozens of witnesses. He assaulted a federal agent on federal property specifically so he would be sent to the federal prison rather than county jail. Once inside he bribes a crooked guard to be placed in the right cell. [[spoiler: He is trying to get close to Dickie Bennett who is in the prison awaiting trial on federal charges]]. Raylan figures this out and tried to thwart the plan by having the charges dropped and Boyd released.
* ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'': Olivia knows that one of the corrections officers at Sealview Women's Prison has been raping and abusing inmates (as well as the 14-year-old daughter of at least one of them). So to catch him, she goes undercover as a woman named Katrina Rae Lewis sent there for a theft or something, complete with a fake past record of an abusive father and an abusive ex-husband. She ends up getting nearly raped by that CO before Finn (undercover there as a CO) comes in.

* On ''Series/MyNameIsEarl'', Randy misses Earl so badly that he takes the exam to become a prison guard...and since he scored at least 50%, he passes. Though he's [[TheDitz such a bumbling idiot]] that just like on the outside, Earl ends up protecting Randy instead. (Sometimes from other prisoners, sometimes from Randy himself.) Before that, Randy stole a car and parked it on a median strip hoping to get caught, but he never did.

* Ladd Russo does this in ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}! 1934 - Alice in Jails'' in order to get to Huey, who was held at [[TheAlcatraz Alcatraz]]. While serving a sentence in a different penitentiary and acting like a model prisoner, he learns that inmates may get themselves transferred to Alcatraz for persistent or serious troublemaking in prison. He decides the best way to make such trouble is to systematically brutalize every other inmate in the prison cafeteria.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/BreedsThereAMan": Dr Ralston goes to a police station to get himself jailed because he doesn't want to kill himself, [[DrivenToSuicide but has a powerful urge to commit suicide]]. When the officer on duty tells him he can't be thrown in jail without committing a crime, he quickly racks up three charges; resisting an officer, assault and battery, and malicious mischief.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheDeputyDawgShow'' has Muskie doing what he can to get arrested as Deputy Dawg put the henhouse in the jail as security. Muskie winds up getting arrested and locked up only Deputy Dawg has put the henhouse back in its proper location.

->'''Harkness:''' I heard a rumour you were in here, so I committed a few crimes. Well, maybe a lot of crimes. Maybe more than I should have...
->'''The Doctor:''' What sort of crimes?
->'''Harkness:''' You're going to take the moral high ground with me when I'm breaking you out of prison?
-->-- ''Series/DoctorWho'', "Revolution of the Daleks"

* In the ''WesternAnimation/MegaMan'' cartoon, Megaman decided the best way to get to Dr. Light and Roll in the Wily-run future was to get himself arrested, so he hit a copbot over the head with a lamppost. It worked.

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' does this with a twist: a collection of [[AnIcePerson ice villains]] all get arrested on the same day, so they can help with a break-out from Belle Reve. Two of them get sent to Belle Reve right away, and the Justice League get clued something is up when the other two arrange to get sent there as well--Mr. Freeze suing to be considered legally sane and Icicle Jr. suing to be tried as an adult. So Superboy and Miss Martian disguise themselves as captured supervillains so they can infiltrate and find out what's going on.

[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/WonderWoman https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wonder_woman_lockup.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:When asking nicely doesn't work...]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. At the start of "Revolution of the Daleks", the Doctor has been incarcerated in an asteroid prison that even she can't get out of. Fortunately her old friend Jack Harkness finds out she's there and commits a few crimes (Well maybe more than a few) to get himself incarcerated [[AssShove along with his escape equipment]]. Apparently it took nineteen years for him to work his way to an adjourning cell, but as they're both time travelers this isn't much of a problem plotwise.

->'''Harkness:''' You're going to take the moral high ground with me when I'm breaking you out of prison? Be grateful!

* ''Series/DoctorWho''. At the start of "Revolution of the Daleks", the Doctor has been incarcerated in an asteroid prison that even she can't get out of. Fortunately her old friend Jack Harkness finds out she's there and commits a few crimes (Well maybe more than a few) to get her out. Apparently it took nineteen years for him to work his way to an adjourning cell, but as they're both time travelers this isn't much of a problem plotwise.

* In ''Manga/MoriartyThePatriot'', Bond needs to infiltrate a prison to free a convict who has been falsely accused of a crime. Since the compound just had its security tightened, Bond starts a fight with a drunk to get into the prison.
* ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean'': Ermes Costello got arrested and sent to Green Dolphin Street Prison after holding up a convenience store. Turns out she got arrested ''on purpose'' to get revenge on Sports Maxx, the mobster who [[spoiler: killed her sister,]] and is an inmate at that very prison.

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' does this with a twist: a collection of [[AnIcePerson ice villains]] all get arrested so that they can help with a break-out. The heroes get clued off when this involves Mr. Freeze suing to be considered legally sane and Icicle Jr. suing to be tried as an adult.

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' following Paris Hilton's arrest. Her ''The Simple Life'' co-star Nicole Richie robs a bank to get arrested and break her out, but the bank teller she's robbing points out that she might just get probation, so she kills him. When she's arrested, the officer points out that, since she's a celebrity, she'll still be out in a matter of days (as would Paris in the first place).

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' has Done-It Duncan, who'll confess to anything in order to spend the night in jail, where he's safe from other criminals and gets something to eat. He almost never actually did it, and the Watch put up with him because he inadvertently gives them information about the crimes.

Supertrope to CantGetInTroubleForNuthin. See also TrojanPrisoner, PlayAlongPrisoner, ConvenientlyCellmates, and ChainedHeat. This is a subtrope of {{Unishment}}, where being put into prison is the desired "penalty" for committing a crime, and of CapturedOnPurpose. Named for, but not particularly related to the GetOutOfJailFreeCard.

* The eponymous protagonist of ''Series/JessicaJones2015'' attempts this in the first season, believing it's the only way she'll be able to keep everyone else around her safe while luring Kilgrave into displaying his talent on-camera. Unfortunately, Kilgrave is, as usual, steps ahead of her. To ensure she gets into jail, she brings in [[spoiler:her neighbor Ruben]]'s severed head and dumps it on the detective's desk.

* ''Film/KaamelottPremierVolet'': At the border between Hispania and Aquitania wher a BountyHunter brought him (and his friend Venec, we learn [[Myth/KingArthur Arthur Pendragon]] hasn't spoken a word since he was caught and put in a cage. He breaks his silence to yell at the border guard and demands he arrests him and the bounty hunter for illegally bringing slaves into Logres. His and Venec's yelling becomes an AnnoyingBackgroundEvent as the bounty hunter tries to negotiate... and then Venec yells "[[PrecisionFStrike The Duchess of Aquitania is a whore!]]" Even Arthur stares at him in StunnedSilence, but it works, and they are brought before the Duke of Aquitania, who's a friend and ally of Arthur.