History Main / MightAsWellNotBeInPrisonAtAll

* A group of people in ''JonathanCreek'' decide to kill a murderous escape artist rather than turn him in, assuming that there's little point in putting a modern day Houdini ''in a jail cell''. [[spoiler: That, and the fact that they all thought he was a CompleteMonster who deserved it.]]

* Polpo, the high-ranking mafia operative from ''[[JojosBizarreAdventure Jojo's Bizarre Adventure]]'' stays in his cell partly because he can still give orders to his men and he can get anything he wants in prison, but mainly because he's so massive that getting him out would be a pain.

* In the ''GreenLantern'' comics, powerfully telepathic arch-villain Hector Hammond's body is imprisoned (he's serving multiple life sentences) and is supposedly under the effects of a psionic inhibitor... but Hammond's mind is so powerful he can still telepathically control people hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the prison without ever leaving his cell.

* {{Daredevil}} villain [[spoiler: Mr. Fear at the end of the Hell to Pay storyline]]. In addition to the above mentioned Kingpin. Hell, most of Daredevil's higher tier villains...
* ThePunisher. His goal is to punish criminals and thats not limited to ''free'' criminals....

* In TheSeventies, when TheJoker had his own bimonthly comic book, the writers had a conundrum. On one hand, the Comics Code Authority at the time required that villains never get away at the end of a story, to show that JusticeWillPrevail. On the other hand, showing a new elaborate escape at the beginning of every issue would get tedious and take precious pages away from the story they wanted to tell. Their solution? Give the Joker an ElaborateUndergroundBase located directly beneath [[CardboardPrison Arkham Asylum]]. He even had a SecretUndergroundPassage in his cell. Apparently, nobody at the CCA tripped to the FridgeLogic of "punishing" someone by imprisoning him in a place he can walk out of at any time.

* In the massive NealStephenson trilogy, TheBaroqueCycle, Newgate and the Tower of London can look like this: visitors freely come and go and some prisoners have a kind of parole. Humorously, high class is another kind of prison: in the Tower, you are allowed to live on the publicly accessible grounds on the entirely reasonable assumption that leaving is tantamount to admission of guilt and the forfeiture of rank, which latter is tantamount to death.

* In the DaleBrown novel ''Wings of Fire'' it eventually comes to light that [[spoiler: Pavel Kazakov]] is still a real threat despite having been arrested at the end of the previous book in the series.
* Megalomaniac Dale Biderbeck is sent to prison in his first appearance in season one of ''Monk'', but he still manages to orchestrate quite a bit of mayhem from behind bars, including [[spoiler: an assassination attempt on the governor of California, which very nearly succeeds]].

Sometimes the BigBad is such a ManipulativeBastard that throwing him into prison isn't much of a hindrance to him. It's not necessarily that he's in a CardboardPrison and [[PlayAlongPrisoner can get out at any time]], or that he's in a LuxuryPrisonSuite and thus might not even notice his circumstances. Rather, it's that while he's in prison, he is still capable of leading his organization and moving his schemes against the good guys forward. Prison is just a change of location for him, and won't slow down his evil plot to take over the world for one nanosecond.

In fact, the greatest of [[TheChessmaster chessmasters]] actually plan for their eventual imprisonment and make getting caught (or even [[MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning getting killed]] in some more extreme examples) [[XanatosGambit a part of their overall scheme from the beginning]].

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* In AmericanMe, la Eme gradually takes control over the drug trade on the streets of East L.A. by leveraging their control over prison into influence out in the free world. Granted, this is TruthInTelevision, as the real la Eme did the same thing...

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* In one episode of ''JusticeLeague'', Batman allowed himself to be captured by the Injustice Gang; he feigned helplessness in order to manipulate one of the Gang's members. He later revealed he could have escaped at any time, but if he did he wouldn't have had a resource "on the inside".

** Towards the end of the second season, Tony Dracon turns out to be just as good at running his crime syndicate from his prison cell as from his mansion. It's even implied that he could have ordered a breakout.

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* There are, unfortunately, a number of Real Life examples of this; mafia-dons and drug kingpins who continue to run their organization with unabated effect while behind bars, often through crooked lawyers who can pass on orders under the cover of 'Client Confidentiality', or 'bought' cops who can turn a deaf ear.

** According to Wola (The Washington Office on South America) this is commonplace in corrupt Mexican prisons where drug cartel bosses often continue their business dealings in relative safety.

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* {{''Goodfellas''}} has Henry Hill go to prison... where he pays his debt to society by sharing a LuxuryPrisonSuite with his friends, all of whom including Henry are free to leave to go dinner shopping. For lobster. [[CrossesTheLineTwice This example Crosses The Line at least Twice]], which is unfortunate considering that, as an autobiography, most of Goodfellas is probably Truth In Television. The part that makes it this trope, however, is that he found himself still able to make money illegally, albeit by selling drugs instead of stealing.

* ''Goodfellas'' has Henry Hill go to prison... where he pays his debt to society by sharing a LuxuryPrisonSuite with his friends, all of whom including Henry are free to leave to go dinner shopping. For lobster. [[CrossesTheLineTwice This example Crosses The Line at least Twice]], which is unfortunate considering that, as an autobiography, most of Goodfellas is probably Truth In Television. The part that makes it this trope, however, is that he found himself still able to make money illegally, albeit by selling drugs instead of stealing.

** On top of that, the protagonists are aware of this, but ''do nothing about it''. The most [[{{Egregious}} egregious]] case was when he escaped from prison, and after they helped to recapture him [[WhatAnIdiot they didn't say a word about him communicating with Gantu]] and [[WallBanger just let him be taken back to his tricked-out cell]]. Sure, StatusQuoIsGod, but come on...

* In ''{{Gargoyles}}'', [[TheChessmaster David Xanatos]] spends a few of the early post-pilot episodes in prison for a Possession of Stolen Goods charge. It doesn't stop him from having the Manhattan Clan repeatedly attacked while he sits tights to run out his jail term for that relatively minor charge.
** As an added bonus, when he got out of prison, whenever someone brought up the time he was caught, he would just respond that he paid his debt to society legally; and do they believe in the legal system or not?
** Towards the end of the second season, Tony Dracon turns out to be just as good at running his crime syndicate from his prison cell as from his mansion. It's even implied that he could have ordered a breakout.

* ''Goodfellas'' has Henry Hill go to prison... where he pays his debt to society by sharing a LuxuryPrisonSuite with his friends, all of whom including Henry are free to leave to go dinner shopping. For lobster. [[CrossesTheLineTwice This example Crosses The Line at least Twice]], which is unfortunate considering that, as an autobiography, most of Goodfellas is probably Truth In Television.

* ''Goodfellas'' has Henry Hill go to prison... and pays his debt to society by sharing a LuxuryPrisonSuite with his friends, all of whom including Henry are free to leave to go dinner shopping. For lobster. [[CrossesTheLineTwice This example Crosses The Line at least Twice]], which is unfortunate considering that, as an autobiography, most of Goodfellas is probably Truth In Television.

** [[RougesGallery The Ratcatcher]] is able to controll the massive amount of rats in Gotham from isnide of his prison cell.

* Willy Watt in ''BatmanBeyond'' was fully capable of exerting his telekinetic abilities to do whatever he wanted wherever he pleased while still being in juvenile hall. [[spoiler: That all ends once after his powers are exposed and Terry recaptures him. He's last seen shackled and wearing a PowerLimiter helmet that negates his telekinesis...and he ''still'' doesn't get any visitors]].

* Willy Watt in ''BatmanBeyond'' was fully capable of exerting his telekinetic abilities to do whatever he wanted wherever he pleased while still being in juvenile hall.