Luxury Prison Suite

A room to kill for.

"Odds bodkins! This convict penitentiary is really nice! If I ever get arrested, I'll demand to be sent here!"

— Charles Upstuck III, DuckTales (1987)

A rich, big-time crook gets sent to prison, but the forces of law and order can't sever all their outside connections nor their desire to retain a gilded life. The character in question has the wherewithal to bribe the guards, walk freely through the prison, import quality furniture, eat caviar in their cell instead of baked beans in the lunchroom, etc. Sometimes, the prisoner may actually have all the resources necessary to escape, staying "imprisoned" because there's a particular reason to do so, or because they can run their affairs unhindered from right where they are. Or they might be a Boxed Crook who undertakes missions for the authorities and receives living perks.

This is actually Truth in Television; notorious felons like Al Capone, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Pablo Escobar, and Augusto Pinochet were kept under house arrest or in very, very nice prison cells (at least until Capone got transferred to Alcatraz). This also happens in cases where the prison is designed to rehabilitate the prisoner into Heel Realization and keep them away from normal people rather than simply punish them, in a forcible aversion of Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook.

Compare the Gilded Cage, where an innocent is deliberately confined in an abode luxurious enough not to look like a prison. Contrast the Hellhole Prison, where the environment in the prison is cruel and horrible.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A 2011 Audi commercial features two upper-class men trying to break out of a prison that looks more like a mansion.

Anime & Manga

• Oliva in Baki the Grappler has his own prison cell decorated like a hotel suite, complete with the finest of liquors and 5-course meals. In exchange, though, he helps the police capture criminals. Baki himself deconstructs the notion of a luxury prison suite by pointing out for all Oliva boasts that he's the freest man in America and can come and go as he pleases, but he still chooses to live inside a prison precisely because of the luxury.
• Cross Ange: "Normas" (that is, girls born without the ability to use Mana) are sent to the island colony "Arzenal" simply for the "crime" of being Norma. However, the girls have an established society within Arzenal, with decent food served during mealtimes, a store to buy clothes and luxury items, and private dorms. True, it's not the ritziest arrangement, and the girls have to risk their lives battling dragons to earn money for things they want to buy, but it's definitely nicer than the cell Ange was thrown into when she made it back to the mainland. Evidence of how nice their accommodations can be, however, is reflected in the set-up that Zola (and later Hilda) has, with many luxurious furnishings in her dorm up to and including a private hot tub.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • When Jotaro is arrested at the start of the Stardust Crusaders arc, so many things pop up constantly in his cell that it looks more like someone's bedroom than a prison. He later finds out that all of this is due to Star Platinum's powers, but since he didn't know what a Stand was back then, he just assumed it was some sort of demon doing his bidding.
  • In the Golden Wind arc, the Passione capo Polpo lives in a cell filled with luxury paintings, a TV, books, and is also well-stocked with food and wine. He even has his own deadly weapons in there. He also Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All - Bucciarati claims that if he wanted, one word to the warden and he'd be pardoned for all his crimes.
• During Love Hina's rather chaotic penultimate storyline set in the island kingdom of Molmol, revealed Princess Kaolla Su does this to her friends and competitors for Keitaro's hand. The prison is very comfortable, and while she's never called on this, it's clear they don't think much of the tactic.
• The Lupin III Yearly Specials film Lupin III: Alcatraz Connection involves the secret that Alcatraz Island, the Real Life Trope Namer for The Alcatraz, was actually a whole compound (nay, a whole underground city) that was a "criminal paradise". The reason President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert were killed in the Lupin-verse was that JFK shut down the prison when he discovered this and the former Alcatraz convicts plotted revenge.
• The Penal Colony Lutecia was sent to after Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. It looks like a summer getaway and has no restrictions on outside communication, visitors, and delivered items. Lutecia's only limitation seems to be that she can't leave the planet (without permission). Agito even commented in StrikerS Sound Stage X on how nice the place is when she visited Lutecia and her recently re-awakened mother, Megane so they could have a picnic there. Unlike most examples, this is less about the prisoner being rich, and more about the prisoner being extremely young and not fully accountable for her part in the terrorist attack. She presumably didn't accept the "Get Out of Jail Free" Card the others did. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid later revealed that it also has a massive personal training camp that Nanoha and crew can occasionally use, complete with a hot spring.
  • The Big Bad Jail Scaglietti and four of the Numbers are imprisoned in Orbital Prisons, but they live very comfortably there. Scaglietti even tells that Quattro got a little bit fat, though, the latter claims that she becomes back to normal.
• In One Piece, Impel Down, the World Government's super-max prison is not only a Hellhole Prison but one of the worst in fiction. However, there exists a secret enclave in the fifth level called Newkama Land -built by a Devil Fruit user who could tunnel through the earth, Revolutionary Commander Morley- where an inmate lucky enough to find one of the passages to it can gain a reprieve and a small semblance of freedom that is unknown even to the guards. Prior to Luffy's infiltration, it is ruled by Emporio Ivankov, who has the ability to, among other things, gender bend people. With this ability, he offers newcomers to his "New Kama land" the opportunity to be whichever gender they choose. The place has several luxuries like the main room, which is a combination of a sit-down cafe and a discotheque, but Ivankov's guests have to follow a few strict rules that prohibit them from actively interacting with the rest of the prison (so as not to blow their cover), at least not without covert movement (Otherwise, Ivankov is nonbiased as to who may enter.). As of the Time Skip, Ivankov and the bulk of the prisoners he had recruited have returned to his homeland, and Straw Hats ally Bentham, better known as former Baroque Works agent Mr. 2 Bon Kurei, has taken over.
• Prison Life is Easy for a Villainess has the prince throw his fiancee into prison, only to find that she had already shipped a ton of food, books and other items into her cell to make her vacation more comfortable. She then produces a chain and padlock to lock the doors from the inside before he has the chance to confiscate any of it.
• The main antagonist in Psychic Squad first appeared in one of these. In his case, it is probably not so much about connections as about having the ability to teleport stuff in and out as needed.
• Invoked in Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. Half of the chapters revolve around the princess breaking out of her prison cell to find things that will make it more comfortable.
• Subverted in the Hirohiko Araki oneshot Under Execution, Under Jailbreak. A killer is sent to a luxurious prison suite, which considering he was on death row is a major improvement. Then everything in the suite turns out to be a death trap waiting for him to take the bait. He can't even escape through the hole he dug out in the back, fearing the guards installed some kind of guillotine in the wall, so he settles on watching it for decades.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Chojiro Tokumatsu bribes the prison guards with rare cards, allowing him gourmet meals and a cell that is furnished like a traditional samurai's home. His cell even has a katana and wakizashi set in the corner.

Comic Books

• A variant in Albion; psychotic British superhero Captain Hurricane is given a life of luxury in prison because, if he entered one of his "ragin' furies", he could tear the place apart. The warden describes him as "more of a permanent guest than a prisoner"; due to the drugs in his tea he isn't aware he's in prison at all. As you can imagine, he's part of the mass breakout in the climax.
• In Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, Asterix and Obelix are enjoying luxury food while waiting to be thrown to the lions. The jailer explains that this is to ensure they taste nice for the lions. If they were to be thrown off the Tarpean Rock, they would get solid, heavy food.
• The DCU:
  • Batman: When the Joker had his own short-lived series during the 1970s, he somehow had a miniature hide-out constructed beneath his cell in Arkham Asylum.
  • In All-Star Superman comic book series, Lex Luthor has an underground cavern hideout connected to his maximum-security jail cell, complete with an attractive ferrygirl to navigate the underground river and a baboon in a Superman costume.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Sensation Comics: In "Mission to Planet Eros", Wonder Woman goes to a planet where prison is said to be incredibly pleasant, and everyone goes at 15.
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Paula von Gunther's prison cell seems rather sparse, but does include a rather conspicuously nice armchair and more conspicuously a hatch to an elaborate basement lair.
• The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers raid a prison to free their cousin Country Cowfreak. After killing dozens of police, they find him and are shocked to find that he doesn't want to leave. He has a cell to himself with everything he could want — waterbed, 8-track stereo, color teevee... and they let him have all the dope he wants. At the end, it turns out that it was All Just a Dream.
• Invincible: David Anders' "prison cell" is basically a luxury condo full of fun activities. Justified, as it's not meant to punish David (who is guilty of nothing) but to contain his Superpowered Evil Side Dinosaurus, who takes control of David's body whenever he is sufficiently bored or apathetic.
• The son of a mob boss in Kaijumax gets more or less the same "cell" as everyone else — a crater on the tropical island that is the titular prison — but he gets drugs and pornography smuggled in and is clearly being treated much better than the other prisoners.
• Lucky Luke: In the album Le Pied-tendre, an Englishman in the far west is sent to prison, and he turns his cell into a perfect office, addressing the sheriff as a butler. The sheriff is aghast at this, but seems to be helpless against the prisoner's class and British-ness.
• MAD often parodies the kind of prisons white-collar criminals and celebrities get sent to.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The Kingpin from the Marvel Universe gets away with this every time he's thrown in the cooler. Bonus fun; that nice table? The hollow legs are crammed full of hundred-dollar bills. Just in case another bribe needs to happen. Especially in the Marvel Comics 2 universe, he's depicted in Spider-Girl as having an entire luxury suite in his prison cell. Of course, he gets away with it by being a Magnificent Bastard. However, in the former case, like the rest of his power, it shown to be decidedly fragile — he spends the entire issue casually demonstrating his influence and power, how he has prisoners and guards alike in his thrall, dressing up in his classic suit and waiting for Spider-Man to roll up after he put a hit on Aunt May. However, Spidey wasn't holding back, and very quickly (and brutally) demonstrated the difference between a very strong human and an experienced superhuman with enhanced reflexes, speed, and limited precognition, before bluntly informing Kingpin that if May dies, Spidey will come back and kill him by making him asphyxiate on web fluid. After, it's shown that the prisoners have lost their fear of him.
  • Daredevil:
    • Spider-Man and Daredevil villain Hammerhead has one of these in one recent arc.
      Matt Murdock: Nice setup. You get maid service, too?
    • In the next story arc, Mr. Fear uses his designer pheromones to make everyone afraid of him, effectively making him king of prison.
  • The Punisher:
    • When the captured Frank in the Circle of Blood miniseries comes face to face with Jigsaw, who is working for the guy who has much of the prison under his paycheck, it can be seen that his cell is furnished with all sorts of nice things like a radio, a television set, an armchair, and a case of beer.
    • The alternate continuity series, published under the Max imprint, subverts this in the one-shot comic ''The Cell'. The five men who fired the bullets that killed Frank's family are all in the same large cell in Riker's. It looks like any old regular cell, but the narration reveals that they can get whatever the hell they want (except women) and the guards will look the other way. It's implied they could just outright leave if they wanted to. Frank doesn't let them.
  • The one-shot comic The Trial of Venom, a crossover between Daredevil and Spider-Man, begins with the warden at the Vault giving a visitor a tour of the facility, and explaining the new security (put in after the mass break-out in Acts of Vengeance) which includes new holographic technology. She also explains how they're experimenting with a rewards system to encourage rehabilitation, showing Moonstone as an example. She's sunbathing in her cell, which has been turned into a pleasant beach motif using the holograms.
• Occasionally happens to the Mickey Mouse Comic Universe's Big Bad, the Phantom Blot. In one particular story, they covered him with privileges in exchange for him promising not to escape, because they knew they couldn't possibly keep him in jail against his will.
• Alphatraz, the prison planet in Planet Terry, turns out to be a luxury prison where the prisoners are in charge of the facility.
• A minor character from Watchmen, the Big Figure, is seen wearing a silk cravat with his prison blues, smoking a big Cuban cigar, and walking freely through the prison accompanied by two henchmen (though it is implied that he's coercing some of the guards for these privileges, as demonstrated when he asks Rorschach's guard about his wife and children and the guard becomes terrified).

Fan Works

• Common Sense: Team Rocket's stables. They're for the well-behaved Pokémon that they plan to sell and come with actual plants, trees, and soil, along with a large pond for Water-types and skylights that allow natural light in. But, as nice as the accommodations are, the metal walls make it abundantly clear that it's meant to confine them.
• In Coulson's Eleven, the World Security Council decides that superheroes are a threat and orders S.H.I.E.L.D. to lock up the heroes that would eventually form The Avengers^note plus Spider-Man and Loki but barring Black Widow and Hawkeye, who are still working for S.H.I.E.L.D.. S.H.I.E.L.D. is sympathetic enough to provide basic luxuries such as: a lab, books, movies, radio, and internet. They even offer to send in a prostitute for Steve.
• In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, it's mentioned that the reason a holding cell is so comfortable isn't that the suspect is held in especially high esteem or anything like that, it's just that wizards have such a high standard of living that it didn't really occur to anyone not to include a few basic comforts.
• Taylor in Hive Daughter creates a downplayed version with her bio-tinker powers. Because she can create anything if she has access to enough biomass, she starts making luxuries such as chocolate and alcohol for the inmates. She even creates a computer with a working internet connection.
• I'm HALPING: Zach turns the entirety of the Birdcage into what can best be described as a luxury hotel (albeit an underground one) for the inmates while they await parole, provided they either give up their powers or accept a collar that prevents them from breaking the law. Though every luxury, from television access to high end liquor, is a privelege that can be revoked. Except for Teacher, the inmates are wise enough to not abuse their priveleges.
• In Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami, Dark uses his Royal Death Note to manipulate prisoners into doing illegal things for him and then dying in order to get a lot of prison food.
• In Storybook Hero, one character describes the cells for rich purebloods as being better furnished than his house with a far better wet bar.
• In The Uncover of a New Family after coming Back from the Dead Voldemort is quite comfortable in his S.H.I.E.L.D. run Cardboard Prison where he can easily manipulate muggles who underestimate him (and it's far nicer than a Wizarding prison with Dementors). While the S.H.I.E.L.D. guards took his wand he negotiates his way into having access to books, snakes, potions equipment, and a chess board and is quite content with his comfortable life there and won't try to escape as long as he gets regular visits from Harry and his kids.
• Being To Timelessness: In "Time is Still a-Flying", the Master's accommodations for the Doctor and Rose when he imprisons them aboard the Valiant are what are normally meant to be the officers' quarters. They are furnished much like normal dorm rooms, with a bed, a table, a wardrobe, a dresser, and a private lavatory. He even has some reading material stocked in each cell. The Doctor finds himself being forced to trade his normal coat for boring dark grey suits with plain black ties, while Rose is supplied with the wardrobe of a chav. At all times, there is a camera monitoring them 24/7, and they must ring a button if they need to get something from one of the Master's guards.
• Morality Chain (Avatar: The Last Airbender): When Zuko and Azula defect from the Fire Nation, Mai is captured and held at Boiling Rock (Ty Lee manages to escape). They break in to find her... in a perfectly comfortable room with bed, couch, and a small library. Mai is even allowed to keep her knives. That's what happens when your uncle is the warden.
  Azula: [deadpan] Hello, Mai. We came to rescue you from the horrible tortures you were suffering here in the Boiling Rock.

Films — Animation

• Megamind: The main villain is in prison so often that he has turned his prison cell into this, complete with pictures, painting on the walls, a sinister chair, a TV, and so forth. He grew up in that prison. First he just landed there, but then the fucked-up logic of the setting meant that as a three-year-old participating in a prison break, he was sentenced to jail time instead of being put into the foster care system.
• My Little Pony: A New Generation: The "dungeon" cell Sunny and Izzy are thrown into in Zephyr Heights looks more like an upscale hotel or spa room. It's very spacious, well-decorated, and comes with amenities like a large bed, fresh towels, a bowl of fruit, a fountain, and even a massage chair. There is zero explanation given for why it's like this.

Films — Live-Action

• The entire prison becomes a luxury facility in the 1933 short "20,000 Cheers for the Chain Gang," a parody of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.
• After the Fox: Peter Sellers stars as a criminal mastermind, in prison at the movie's beginning (brazenly telling the warden the exact time he'll escape) — when his family visits, he gives them presents of candy, cigarettes, and fresh fruit.
• In The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again the most dangerous crook in the prison is Mac, a gangster who has a whole cell block to himself and much of his gang, which is outfitted like a hotel. They're still conducting their illegal activities from behind bars, with a near-perfect alibi.
• The A-Team: Due to his top-notch people skills and extensive contacts, both military and civilian, Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck is not suffering during his incarceration for a crime he didn't commit. His cell looks like a college dorm room, he was allowed to knock down walls to expand it, and no one seemed to bat an eye that he was sleeping with the female guards.
• The most famous female prisoners in Chicago manage this, through gifts and money sent to them by the public.
• In Cradle 2 the Grave Chi McBride's character had nice rugs, full sized bed, bead curtains, exercise equipment, fine food and a prisoner butler (who was seen preparing food with knives), until they were both killed by the big bad.
• In GoodFellas, when Henry Hill serves his first prison sentence with Paul Vario and other members of their crew, their money and influence get them housed separately from other prisoners and allows them more or less free run of the place without interference from the guards. They even continue to eat gourmet food while inside, maintaining an extravagantly luxurious pantry packed with steaks, lobsters, and the like, as well as contraband liquor and wine (red and white). This privilege did not come cheap, as the guards demanded a large sum of money every month for them to keep the privileges, which leads Henry to resort to selling drugs. As the film was based on Henry Hill's memoirs it was exaggerated, but still...
• Used mildly in The Hurricane. Rubin Carter began with the privilege of wearing prison hospital pajamas rather than standard uniforms and clung to an ironclad determination not to adhere in any way to the normal prison lifestyle. Over the sixteen or so years of his confinement, prison guards allowed him various luxuries in his cell out of a combination of pity, belief in his innocence, and appreciation for not making as much of a nuisance of himself as he could have. Eventually, his cell was filled with various posters of civil rights leaders, pieces of African art, a typewriter on which he writes his memoirs, a small collection of books, and a miniature stove.
• Played for surreal comedy in The Italian Job (1969). Mr. Bridger (played by Noël Coward) in lives in luxury like a proper English gentleman in prison. He takes his tea in a study, is attended by the staff, and continues to manage his criminal empire while still technically behind bars.
• The main premise of Russian comedy film I Want To Go To Jail is how many Western prisons are like this by Russian standards, hence the protagonist's Title Drop.
• Ladies They Talk About: The prisoners get private cells with drawers, comfortable beds, their own record players, and desks for writing.
• Subverted in Law Abiding Citizen. The villain insists a special mattress and a porterhouse steak be placed in his cell in exchange for his confession. The other inmates all shout with rage when they see these items delivered, and the warden pointedly says he'd hate to be the only one who has something in a prison wing full of the Have-Nots. However, he didn't ask for either of these items for luxury. They're both tools for his escape plan.
• Charlie Chaplin ended up in a prison like this in Modern Times. In this case, it was satire of how much worse it was to be living on the streets during The Great Depression. Saving the cops during a jailbreak helped, too. He was even reluctant to leave when his time was up (it was the Depression, after all) but they gave him a signed recommendation that would help him find work.
• In Office Space, Samir is convinced to participate in the scam by being assured that American prisons are like this. He was assured they would go to "White-collar resort" prison, as opposed to "Federal 'Pound me in the ass' prison".
• Subverted in Out of Sight. A rich man in prison is able to pay fellow prisoners for contraband luxuries, but he's being exploited and bullied by the fences, and the luxuries are pretty meager.
• In Paddington 2, Paddington's sheer pluckiness turns the entire prison he is incarcerated in into one of these by appealing to the prisoners' better natures, which in turn makes the guards relax. The canteen starts serving cafe food, the railings get floral decorations, the prisoners are able to pursue hobbies, and the warden reads bedtime stories to them before lights-out. Even when Big Bad Phoenix Buchanan gets put in jail at the end of the movie, everyone is more than happy to help him with his musical numbers, and he's elated that he's finally got what he's always truly wanted — a "captive audience".
• In Quills the Marquis de Sade initially has a spacious room at Charenton Asylum with books, luxury furnishings, wine, and freshly-cooked meals separate from the other inmates. As the film progresses he has these items gradually taken away by the new doctor who runs the institution.
• In a more subdued example, in The Shawshank Redemption, living conditions in Shawshank improve when Andy agrees to help the Warden with his finances (both legal and extra-legal) and he and the guards, in turn, turn a blind eye to his contraband. Over the course of his sentence, Andy slowly customizes his prison cell with bookshelves, knick-knacks, and posters. Of course, the posters were the only thing he really needed.
• In Suicide Squad (2016), as partial rewards for saving the world, Harley Quinn is given an espresso machine in her cell, while Killer Croc has a TV installed in his cell and allowed to eat human food like burgers instead of raw meat like before.
• Played with, in Thor: The Dark World. While Loki's cell definitely has luxuries that other cells don't have because his mother, the queen, still cares about him despite his crimes, his father is furious enough at him to sentence him to a lifetime of solitary confinement. The books his mother sends to him in his cell are barely enough of a distraction to prevent him from going mad from the isolation.
• At the end of The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort is sent to jail for his crimes and is understandably terrified. That is until he remembers that he's a rich American going to prison for white-collar crimes and is thus sent to a minimum-security prison complete with tennis courts. In comparison, the FBI agent who arrested him is shown riding the subway like every other schlub, knowing that Being Good Sucks.
  Belfort: For a brief, fleeting moment, I had forgotten I was rich and lived in a place where everything is for sale.
• In X-Men: The Last Stand, Jimmy/Leech is being kept in a spacious, clean room with a TV. Justified in that he is a child, and that Warren Worthington II is trying to ensure his cooperation in creating the mutant cure.

Literature

• The Alatriste books, as carefully-researched Historical Fiction, occasionally mention the possibility of such in 17th Century Spanish prison. Visitors were allowed and prisoners could purchase no end of luxuries so long as they had the coin or someone on the outside willing to bring it in for them. Captain Alatriste himself is never in so fortunate a state, though, and opens the first book having just endured a short sentence over some unpaid debts. In the fourth book, Alatriste and Iñigo attend a sizable party in prison honoring a man about to go to the gallows the next day.
• Brightly Burning is set in a country that does not execute the insane, which leads to problems when a deluded noblewoman attempts murder and makes it clear during her trial that she will try to kill again. So the judge puts her in the care of a religious order that permanently cloisters some of its nuns (as a sort of spiritual exercise, to which the nuns fully consent). The cloisters are fairly roomy, even including a bath, and the criminal's family can send her any sort of luxury they want. But she will never get out, and she has absolutely no control over her "wardens".
• Chrysalis (RinoZ): The ants don't really know anything about how to house prisoners, except not to let them leave, so their "cells" end up being spacious suites decorated in the same fashion as any other rooms for housing (allied) humans.
  Wherever the ants have taken their interior decorating tips from (I suspect Enid), they've really taken the style to heart. As I enter the rooms in which our not-quite-willing guests have been stationed, I find them once again to be lavishly decorated with fine, carved wooden furniture, lush woven rugs and plump cushions on every chair.
• Fredric Brown wrote a short story about a tourist arriving on a distant planet who accidentally kills a local. Told that because the locals enjoy a very long lifespan, the penalty for murder, even accidental murder, is death at dawn the next morning, he despairs. Under the law, he is to be housed overnight in a magnificent 100 room mansion with all manner of luxuries, food, liquor, and even women provided to meet any imagined need of the condemned man for his last night. Then he asks how long he has to enjoy all this. He is told that a full day on this planet equates to only about 120 earth years so he only has about 60 years to live (apparently planetary rotation is very slow). As the story ends, he wonders out loud if he'll make it.
• In Codex Alera, The Alcatraz has one of these set aside for special prisoners who are there mainly for political reasons and they want to keep as comfortable as possible. It was originally built by a previous ruler who imprisoned the wife of a powerful noble lord there for treason against the crown and went there to personally "interrogate" her three times a week. Considering she actually did commit treason, that was pretty much the only way to keep her around as his mistress.
• In Discworld, Lord Vetinari has his dungeons set up like this, for those periodic times when Ankh-Morpork revolts against his rule; he's even convinced the rats to provide room service. Vimes notes that it has been constructed more for keeping the chaos that ensues when Vetinari isn't in power out than keeping a prisoner in. Naturally, Vetinari has installed several secret exits, should he want to leave, but for all intents and purposes, it's the safest place in the city. In fact, all of the locking mechanisms are on the inside, so he can easily prevent anyone unlocking the door from the outside.
  • Also, Leonard da Quirm's holding "cell." It's in a secret passageway filled with traps that Leonard designed, and he has a spare key for the door. He's quite comfortable, and Vetinari keeps him supplied with all the paint, wood, metal, and paper he needs.
    • Leonard is an interesting case because he's only imprisoned in the strictest semantical sense of the word. Sure, he's not allowed to leave unsupervised, but as the books note, Leonard is the sort of guy who can't truly be imprisoned unless they find a way to lock up his intellect. What he's got is closer to protective custody; it keeps Leonard's considerable, yet indiscriminate, genius out of the hands of those who would use it for petty, destructive short-term gain, and in the hands of Lord Vetinari, who is occasionally inclined to exploit it for the long-term good of the city, but mostly finds that what the long-term good of the city needs is for no one to actually have access to Leonard's genius.
• In The Emperor's Soul, the heroine is kept locked in a room for the 100 days allocated her to complete her task. She blows off steam by using her (very limited) powers of Retconjuration to change minor things about her room: some water damage was identified and fixed in time, a battered desk was lovingly maintained, a famous artist once spent a few months convalescing there and painted the walls, etc. By the end of the hundred days, her cell is the nicest room in the palace,except for the rotted out floorboards she installed under the bed as part of her escape plan.
• The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn documents life in a sharashka, a fairly comfortable Soviet-era prison camp for "useful" detainees (mostly rocket scientists and nuclear scientists, but also cryptographers, etc.)
• In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, this is the fate of Lord Asriel. He was banished to the North for causing political distress but was allowed to contract the construction of his own cabin including glass windows (which were very expensive at that time). He even managed to continue the experiments that got him banished in the first place by having materials and equipment smuggled in.
• In the first Inheritance book, Eragon, this befalls Murtagh at the Varden's headquarters once their leader learns who he is—much to his surprise. When Eragon comes to visit him, Murtagh forestalls the inquisition: "You thought I'd be sitting in some rat hole chewing hardtack."
• In Inherit the Wind a jailed schoolteacher jokes that his cell is more comfortable than the rented room he normally lives in. Similar to the Charlie Chaplin example above, this is not meant to imply that he is getting special treatment, rather that his normal quarters just suck.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries: When Dallas is arrested for Hope's murder in Death of a Bachelorette, she ends up asking the assistant Chief of Police (keep in mind, there are two whole people in Paratito Island's police force), to get her various things, like magazines, a comfy cover for her bed, and even soft pillows. The key to her cell is left in the lock, but she doesn't bother leaving since she doesn't know how to get back to the mansion where Someday My Prince Will Come is being shot.
• In the novel L.A. Confidential incarcerated mob king Mickey Cohen is even allowed to keep a dog in his cell.
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: After the rebels win the war, presumptive-new-president Alma Coin has former President Snow kept in one of these prior to his execution. The other characters reason it must be to set a precedent — to establish that such prisoners should be treated well in case she ever falls from power and ends up one of them herself.
• In the Olivia Goldsmith novel Pen Pals, Jennifer takes the rap for an insider trading charge her boss actually committed. She's assured she'll go to a "country club" prison and when checking in, actually asks if there are messages for her as if it's a resort. Subverted as she meets with the Warden, saying she'll only be there for a few days before her lawyer gets her out but in that time, needs to keep up in work. Thus, she requests a cell with a nice window view, a computer with Internet access and printer, and someone to take her notes and maybe answer her phone. The warden just sits in amazement at how a woman as bright as Jennifer doesn't understand her circumstances and quickly makes it clear this is not going to be a vacation.
• Nobles in A Song of Ice and Fire usually get this (Truth in Television for a Medieval European-type culture); Sansa Stark lives in a luxurious castle with servants, but Joffrey's cruelty ensures she remains miserable. Jaime Lannister was originally kept in a similar fashion, but after he broke his captors' expectation that he wouldn't try to escape, they moved into a conventional dungeon.
• The Villain Syndrome wing is built for this in Superheroes Anonymous. The authorities have found that it's far cheaper to imprison the supervillains in luxury and thus entice them to come back than it is for them to keep breaking out and needing to be recaptured.
• Conversational Troping in the Temps story "Sortilege and Serendipity": When Ramsbottom is revealed as the Stealing from Thieves master hacker known as the Taxman, he asks Sweetland if he's going to prison. Sweetland thinks of the many uses the governments of Europe could have for these abilities, and tells him "Yes, they will. You'll be in maximum security luxury for the rest of your life."
• In the Australian novel Underground, Leo James ends up imprisoned in the abandoned House of Representatives, and despite being periodically tortured by American agents, he finds it quite comfortable: he has the pick of all the furniture to sleep on, access to the member's lounge and toilets, and just about anything the evacuated members left behind.
• In Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, a wealthy Russian crime-boss has bagged the cell that has been fitted out to comply with European human rights laws. Ironically if he didn't do this he'd risk being raped or murdered by the hard-core lifers who still control the prison system. Arkady Renko even jokes about it with the mob boss. When the mobster talks about going on vacation later on, Renko pointed out that if he wanted luxury quarters, good food, and a staff that catered to his every whim, why not stay in Butyrka Prison?
• Words of Radiance (second book of The Stormlight Archive): Adolin is perfectly willing to be imprisoned for weeks alongside Kaladin to show that he considers him a brother in arms. But he's not going to be a barbarian about it.
  Kaladin: Are you wearing cologne?
• In the Margaret Weis novel Hung Out, there's a minimum security prison that's effectively a luxury resort for wealthy, mostly white collar criminals. Main character Xris gets sentenced there after being convicted on trumped up first degree murder charges as a plot to get him in there to stage a prison break for a group of mob bosses. Once there, it turns out that it's not nearly as nice as advertised: there's a sadistic warden and a hulking brute of a prisoner who's making life hell for all the other residents. Both of them were also working for the guy who hired Xris- they provided incentive for the mob bosses to want to leave their cushy cells, while Xris provided the means to escape. The idea was that they'd then go to recover their hidden wealth so that Xris's employer, the head of the intelligence bureau, could take it from them and break the mob's power. At the end of the novel, he promises Xris that both of his agents will leave the prison and reforms will be put into place so that it's no longer either a hellhole or a country club and instead an actual rehabilitation facility.
• Cradle Series: Several times, Lindon is imprisoned, and every time he is surprised by how nice the accommodations are. The first time, this is partly because he hasn't technically done anything illegal (just very stupid) and he has a powerful enough backer that they can't do anything terrible to him without a good reason. In later books, he personally is powerful enough that they need to make sure his cells are nice enough so he doesn't try to break out. Their cells can still hold him, of course, but any damage he causes will be expensive.

Live-Action TV

• Season 6 of 24 has Charles Logan under house arrest at his presidential retreat, which covers roughly 10,000 square feet and includes a tennis court and swimming pool.
• Mayberry Jail in The Andy Griffith Show features Aunt Bee's home cooking, lace doilies on the bedstands and a key left deliberately within reach of the cell so that Otis, the town drunk, can let himself out when he's sobered up. The Logic being that the only person who would ever use it is a decent bloke who just needs a place where he can't hurt himself or others.
  • Subverted in one episode: after arresting some real criminals leaves the prison full, Otis is put in Aunt Bee's custody - the Taylor house quickly gets nicknamed "The Rock".
• Barbary Coast: In the pilot, Lt. Tully arrests Barringer for murder, even though he knows he will be acquitted at trial. Barringer is later seen sitting in his cell with the door open, eating a luxurious meal, including a bottle of champagne. He even attempts to send Tully out to buy him a fresh bottle.
• Battlestar Galactica. At the beginning of Season 3, Athena's previously-stark cell is shown to be fitted out with curtains and furniture, indicating her change in status from hated Cylon prisoner to trusted advisor to Admiral Adama. According to the podcast commentary, the "prisoner with privileges" trope was specifically referred to in the script.
  • It's later revealed that Cylons have the ability to imagine themselves in surroundings that are far more intricate, making all this 'luxury' unnecessary — except as a means of making Athena's jailors think of her as something other than Just a Machine.
• When the villain Ma Parker took over Gotham State Penitentiary and had herself appointed warden in an episode of Batman (1966), she declared that every night all the inmates would feast on steak and baked potatoes.
• Big Mouth (2022) Gucheon Penitentiary is your typical prison but the privileged prisoners bribe the warden to get the best room with entertainment services like a pool table and Whisky and get more favorable treatment than the rest of the inmates.
• Copper: In "Surviving Death", Bill is placed in one after he takes the fall for Kate's murder. He gets to live in luxury for a month and his wife gets $5,000.
• Daredevil (2015): Wilson Fisk's various forms of housing take on this form.
  • Downplayed in season 2. Fisk has a large private cell and gets rare steak delivered to him... but he's still eating it off a tray while sitting on his uncomfortable-looking prison cot in an orange jumpsuit. Having the guards and inmates on puppet strings gets you a lot of perks, but it still ain't the Ritz. And at the start of season 3, we see he can make homemade omelettes in his cell, but they don't look or taste as great as the ones he'd make in his penthouse before his arrest.
  • In season 3, Fisk manipulates the FBI into releasing him from prison by convincing them that he's in danger as a result of snitching. They confine him to the penthouse of the Presidential Hotel in east Midtown, which isn't really incarceration seeing as Fisk secretly owns the hotel through a bunch of shell companies. And the 24-hour surveillance the FBI ostensibly have him under means nothing when they're all secretly in his back pocket. He's also got a war room accessible by a hidden staircase in the bedroom closet, from which Fisk can conduct business with Felix Manning without being noticed. Midway through the season, he's able to leverage the FBI into returning his possessions, allowing him to trade prison jumpsuits for his iconic white suits from the comics, as well as fully furnish the penthouse and fill it with fine art, making it feel a lot like the Chelsea penthouse he lived in before he was arrested.^note The exteriors of the Presidential Hotel are represented by the Lotte New York Palace in Midtown; the interiors of Fisk's penthouse, however, were filmed on a soundstage in Greenpoint The only thing keeping it from losing the status of being a "prison" altogether is the cameras...but even then, Fisk has control over when they're recording. It's lampshaded by Karen when she pays Fisk a visit with the intention of provoking him into attacking her.
    Wilson Fisk: Miss Page. I must admit, I'm surprised you're here.
    Karen Page: I suppose this qualifies as hard time?
    Wilson Fisk: Yes, I'm sure all of this is offensive to you, given our personal history.
    Karen Page: You mean the times you tried to have me killed.
    Wilson Fisk: Crimes for which I'm still paying.
• The Master, during his imprisonment in the Doctor Who story "The Sea Devils". The Doctor had evidently pleaded that he be made very comfortable in captivity, as he meant for him to be there rather a long time.
  • In a novel set after the Master's capture (but before he was placed in a prison with hypnotism-resistant guards), the only reason he hasn't escaped is that he doesn't want to just yet. He's quite put out when his allies "rescue" him because that wasn't in his plan.
• Game of Thrones: After being captured in Dorne, Jaime Lannister is kept in a very nice room, as befits the brother of the Queen and Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Meanwhile, his accomplice Bronn, a lesser knight, and the Sand Snakes are all rotting in traditional cells elsewhere.
• Get Shorty: Rick decides to conceal his cooperation with the FBI by voluntarily going to prison. The FBI ensure that he's sent to a luxurious minimum-security prison. When he arrives, he has to ring the doorbell and ask to be let inside, saying, "I'm here to go to prison." His "cell" looks like a Motel 6 room, and his new bunkmate offers him cookies his daughter baked. We later see Rick enjoying a casual game of badminton on a lush lawn, directing a play, and oil painting. After a life of stress and insecurity, it's basically a year-long vacation. When his sentence is complete, he honestly states that he'd rather not leave.
• In the third season of Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter is incarcerated within a ridiculously spacious and adorned asylum cell, complete with a desk, bookshelves, and cooking equipment so he can continue making his own meals. Justified, as the hospital is granting him these luxuries in exchange for his cooperation. His extreme wealth due to his uncle being Lithuanian royalty may have helped, as well.
• Horrible Histories:
  • One sketch has John Balliol complaining about how inhumane the conditions in the Tower of London are. The interviewer points out that his 'cell' is actually more like a hotel suite, with comfortable furniture; tapestries; excellent; his family, servants, and pets with him; and he's allowed of the Tower to go hunting.
  • Another sketch has a Georgian nobleman explaining that if you are rich, you can buy all kinds of luxuries inside a Georgian prison; such as no manacles, good food, comfortable furniture, and even pets in your cell. But that this lasts only as long as your money does.
• One of these features in a skit used at least twice on The Jack Benny Program. At least once, at the end, Jack Benny's character is asked what he did to get sent there and he replies something like "I won a radio quiz show.".
• Downplayed in one episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Well-connected mobsters have bribed a group of prison guards to wait on them and bring in contraband from the outside. But they're still living in regular-sized cells and space is limited.
• Used in several episodes of Leverage. In one, they have a witness who is in jail. They offer to break him out if he helps them. He laughs at them because he is quite happy in the minimum-security prison. So they frame him as the leader of the Aryan Nation and threaten to send him to a maximum-security prison if he doesn't give them the info they need.
• Khan (who essentially runs the prison) lives in one in the MacGyver (1985) episode "The Escape".
• In The Magnificent Seven TV series, Ezra's Con Artist mother is briefly imprisoned on charges of theft; she promptly arranges to have her cell comfortably appointed with drapes and furniture.
• Also parodied on Married... with Children when Al is imprisoned for swiping some things from a hotel room. The prison is hellish, but when one of the other prisoners informs Al that they're served bread and water three times a day, Al is so thrilled at the improvement over his home situation that he declares, "This is truly the best vacation I've ever had!"
• Monk: Dale the Whale, an antagonist from early in season 1, reappears in one of these in the season 2 finale. He has his own very large cell and lives with a certain amount of luxury. This is partly due to his massive wealth and influence and partly due to his massive size; he's too fat to stand, let alone try leaving his cell, due to which the door is left wide open. All of this was revoked at the end of season 6 after Monk thwarts his plot to frame Monk for murder as well as assassinate the governor of California.
• In the Murdoch Mysteries epsiode "Do the Right Thing, Part 1", Hilda Fanshaw's prison cell is done up like a Victorian parlour, with a large bed in one corner and a discreet floral curtain with a sink just about visible in another. When the Murdochs first visit her, she has a full tea service on the table (although she apologises that it's far from the best china), on their second visit she has a bottle of wine on ice. She is however, not allowed to leave the cell and is going to be hanged in three days.
• On Narcos, Pablo Escobar uses his power to negotiate his own prison sentence, in a prison he himself built. Naturally, it's basically a resort and hardly even keeps up the pretext of being a prison. (Truth in Television; see Real Life below.) For that matter, even the regular prisons in Colombia are barely prisons at all if you're a narco.
• The Night Of: Freddy is introduced with a montage of his luxury prison suite, which features a lot of furniture, newspaper clippings of his former glories, and a large stash of contraband cell phones. We later see that other inmates sleep in cots in the public room.
• The Office (US): Ex-convict Martin Nash served time in a minimum-security prison. His descriptions of the prison make his co-workers start to talk about how it sounds better than working at Dunder-Mifflin, which enrages Michael. It's ultimately Toby of all people who calms Michael down, saying that of course everyone would rather be working at Dunder-Mifflin than locked up in prison. They're working by choice and paid to be there.
• In Orange Is the New Black, celebrity chef Judy King gets a personal room, with many bonuses like a seltzer-maker, and a roommate of her convenience, while the other inmates are stuffed inside overcrowded dormitories. This is because she's famous and wealthy, and the directors of the prison are afraid she'll give them bad publicity, or even sue them, if she's treated the way the other inmates are.
• Simon Adebisi from Oz outfits his pod this way after Unit Manager Querns makes him a trustee. A video of Adebisi partying with his prags in this cell later gets Querns sacked.
  • Also the inmates in the AIDS ward are allowed pretty much what they want, as the guards figure they're dying anyway.
  • Em City is a cell block-wide version of this, with perks like bright lights, pods with see-through doors, and civilian clothing instead of fatigues. Of course, this comes at the price of almost constant surveillance.
• In the episode "Eagleton" on Parks and Recreation, Leslie gets arrested in Pawnee's upscale rival town Eagleton. Eagleton is so rich that their jail includes guards who act more like waiters, the blankets are very soft and fluffy, and there are prison gift bags.
• Harry Grout in Porridge (BBC prison comedy from the 70's). His assigned job is to clean the swimming pool. Slade Prison has exactly 0 swimming pools.
  • In one episode Grouty asks Fletcher if he follows The Archers. Fletch explains he doesn't, on account of them not being allowed radios in their cells. "Really? No-one ever mentioned it to me."
  • In the 2016 Porridge special, Fletcher's grandson Nigel is a computer hacker who's sentenced to Wakeley Prison, a high-tech compound with pool tables and televisions for the inmates. Naturally, the younger Fletcher uses his social savvy to earn himself a single-occupancy cell within a month of his arrival in the prison.
• Prodigal Son: Martin Whitly's cell at the mental hospital is spacious, with a large bed, a desk, and fully stocked bookshelves, as well as regular access to a TV and phone. He says that it's all paid for by rich Saudi clients, who don't mind getting consultation from a renowned surgeon who also happens to be a notorious Serial Killer. Though this turns out to be a lie — the cell was actually paid for by Nicholas Endicott, in order to buy Martin's silence on what he knows about Endicott's crimes.
• Red Dwarf, "Krytie TV". After being reprogrammed into a ruthless TV executive, Kryten is seen with a cell full of luxuries, with the guards calling him "Sir".
  • Whether it's the same one isn't mentioned, but Lister says there's a luxury block that prisoners can use as a reward for good behavior.
• Servant of the People: When Vasiliy visits Yuriy in prison, Yuriy reveals a secret prison suite, that looks more like a luxury apartment, behind the wall of his normal cell.
• Parodied on Sisters when oldest sister Alex's husband is sent to jail for tax evasion. When she visits him, we see that the place like a country club—tennis courts, golf ranges, pools, etc.
• Seen in Season 2 of The Wire, all of which drug lord Avon Barksdale spends in prison. He manages to maintain control of his business, take over the supply of drugs flowing into the prison, and spend his free time playing video games and eating KFC.
  • Wee Bey attempts this as well, with movie posters papering the walls of his cell and a line of fish tanks just like he had at home (though these have plastic fish.) Unfortunately, one particularly cruel guard who hates Wee-Bey for killing a cousin of his on Avon's orders decides to tear down his posters and fuck with his fish.

Theatre

• In The Beggar's Opera, Captain Macheath pays to make his stay in Newgate Prison considerably more comfortable, with no chains and excellent food.
• In William Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 2, Richard of York's son Edward is imprisoned by the Bishop, but apparently so well-treated he is allowed to go out hunting. That's how he escapes.

Video Games

• Ace Attorney:
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, after Kristoph Gavin is convicted of murder and sent to solitary, he still manages to receive presents, which include: a bookshelf full of novels, little artsy knickknacks, a bottle of the best nail polish on the market, and a comfy chair that's at least 10 times as expensive as the other chairs in the prison. Talk about connections.
  • In the second episode of Gyakuten Kenji 2, assassin Sirhan Dogen has had his cell converted into an ostentatious Buddhist shrine. Justified in that he was threatening to have his Mooks kill the warden's family if she didn't give him whatever he wanted.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Datz Are'bal has this opinion of Japanifornian jails. He's been to actual Hellhole Prisons due to his affiliation to the Defiant Dragons, so he finds a higher-quality facility like that to be pretty welcoming.
  • Downplayed in Justice for All. There's no indication that Matt Engarde has a better detention cell and he has to show up in the same room for visits, but he does get to keep his phone, he can apparently place orders for pizza, and he somehow has a glass of brandy that he can pull from Hammerspace.
• The protagonist of Devil's Third has a private cell in Guantanamo Bay of all places that is more or less a private penthouse suite than a real prison. It's large and spacious and filled with things such as a private bar, a drum set, and a giant monitor that the US Government contacts him through.
• In Dwarf Fortress, it's recommended that you make your prisons this. High-quality décor and materials keep imprisoned dwarves happy, which is good since they might kick off a tantrum spiral if they're upset and they're probably innocent anyways since dwarven justice would give your average Kangaroo Court pause and the most common "crime" dwarves are imprisoned for is 'being in the fortress when an Upper-Class Twit's ridiculous demand went unanswered'. If a dwarf starts seriously misbehaving, players have their own ways of dealing out justice.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Sibbi Black-briar is given an eight-month sentence in a luxurious "cell" — an actual bed, gourmet food, etc. — for committing murder. This is thanks to his mother Maven being one of the most influential and powerful people in Skyrim. And he still has the gall to complain.
  • It's implied that the reason he's in there at all is not because of any due process of law, but because his mother Maven was sick and tired of his misbehavior and the murder was the last straw. Even then, it's not the fact that he killed someone (Sibbi works as an expert hitman for his mother, and when his services are needed she still arranges for his door to be unlocked to track a certain target), but that he killed someone recklessly. It's basically just a time-out.
  • Madanach, the leader of the Forsworn and a prisoner in Markarth's Cidhna Mines, gets his own private cave with a bed, desk, fully stocked bookcase, and bodyguard in exchange for using his forces to help the Silver-Bloods. This doesn't seem like much, but considering the other prisoners have to mine for silver, and don't even have a bedroll to lay on...
• The Escapists features Center Perks, with complementary TVs and sun loungers. One of the random dialogue even has the guards pointing out why no one would want to escape.
• The Escapists 2 has Center Perks 2.0, which has a large Social room, giant canteen, big gym, and plenty of things to do in your free time.
• The Special Prison in Ghost Trick seems relatively cozy. The rock star can keep his instruments and Jowd can paint as much as he pleases. He even gets giant roast chicken for dinner... though it's cold and hard by the time it arrives, and it was supposed to be his last meal. This is justified by the sort of prisoners held in there. Though they all committed crimes of various sorts, Cabanella strongly suspected (correctly) that they did so under the influence of a mysterious "manipulator", both due to the seeming impossibility of their acts and their lack of personal motives. Since his personal philosophy is to simply throw someone in jail to keep them from getting into trouble until he can legally free them, it's not a stretch that it was arranged for those prisoners to be kept comfortable until they were proven innocent.
• How Rex Fury did time in LEGO City Undercover. Roughly the size of a small apartment, it has a hot tub, a jukebox equipped with classical music, couches, and even what appears to be a Rock Band drum kit in front of his HDTV.
• Due to his high-ranking connections in the mafia, Leo Galante has one of these in Mafia II.
• During the introduction of Mass Effect 3, Shepard half-jokes that being detained isn't so bad "once you get used to the hot food and soft beds." What little we see of Shepard's "cell" is more similar to house arrest, featuring floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the city and access to Datapads and other conveniences. Shepard is even still addressed by rank and saluted by on-duty personnel and has to remind them that it is not appropriate. Dialogue reveals that the detention was for political reasons to show them "punishing" Shepard for the events of Mass Effect 2.
• In Prison Architect, it is entirely possible to build one of these for your prisoners by building a larger-than-minimum prison cell and furnishing it with items needed to satisfy their needs, such as televisions, a prayer mat, a shower, and telephone. This can actually make it much easier to deal with them, as they can be put in lockup for longer periods than normal without them flipping out and turning violent. Later versions of the game added a ranking system to the prison cells based on size and the objects in the cells, and this helps with keeping order in the prison, as prisoners who rate access to nicer cells due to good behavior will stay obedient to keep their comfortable rooms, and other prisoners will try to behave so they can upgrade from normal cells to the cushier ones.
• Randal's Monday: Randal gets eventually a sweet throne in his prison cell.
• In Ratchet & Clank (2016), this is what Qwark's cell is revealed to be after the events of the movie: he has an enormous cell with relaxing music, comfortable seating, reading material, massage sessions, and holographic walls depicting the vacation planet of Pokitaru.
• In Remember11, Inubushi Keiko (a mass murderer), lives in relative comfort at the SPHIA facility. Justified in that SPHIA was built as a psychiatric hospital, rather than a prison.
• In Rimworld, putting prisoners in nice, well-furnished prison cells with art, furniture, and carpets will reduce their resistance significantly, making them less likely to try a breakout and making them much easier to recruit.
• When the protagonists of Shadow Hearts: From The New World bust into Al Capone's prison cell they find that it's well-furnished and quite comfy, as a nod to the Real Life situation mentioned below.
• The prison cell that holds Lucretia Merces in Suikoden V is like this. She explains that it was originally a cell for incarcerated royalty or nobility, and ended up in it herself due to her services for, well, royals and nobles (the extreme respect that a few of the guards have for her certainly doesn't hurt).
• Kenneth Blackwell at the end of Trauma Center chooses to go to prison to atone for his crimes instead of taking a pardon (he was forced against his will to do the bidding of the Big Bad). In the sequel, you get to visit his prison, which is basically a research lab. He performs research on GUILT while imprisoned so he can help Caduceus combat against the new strains, but he also admits that he's very limited in what he can do since he can't get full access to the things he needs for his research due to him serving his sentence.
• Police Officer Marcus Reed's crime boss father in True Crime: New York City
• Yakuza 0 has a very downplayed version of this, in which the gangster Homare Nishitani uses a regular prison cell in a police station as a personal hideout and purposely gets himself arrested whenever he needs a place to lay low. While it's otherwise a regular jail cell with no special accommodations since the cops are all under his payroll he not only gets to use them as bodyguards and gofers but he can leave whenever he feels like it.

Webcomics

• In Captain Ufo, Ufo himself ends in one of these as "voluntary inmate" after he insisted that everyone should acknowledge his evil genius during the trial that opens season two.
• In Homestuck, Derse's Very Important Prisoners' block is probably meant to be a torturous Gilded Cage, and Caliborn seemed to think so when he spent time there, but Dad Crocker, being a normal, classy human who loves the luxurious provisions, seems to be spending his time there nicely.
• The actual rooms each of the cast are given in Monster Soup are quite spacious and, though antique, the furniture looks nice. The backgrounds show large hanging pictures throughout the castle and in the rooms.
• Precocious: This is what the Box of Shame becomes after being upgraded a few times.

Western Animation

• In The Adventures of Puss in Boots, San Lorenzo's prison also doubles as its bar. Although Puss insists prisoners aren't allowed to order drinks while there, the bartender sells them drinks behind his back anyways.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes had the original Big House prison. Since it was partially designed by Hank Pym, he believed strongly in prisoner rehabilitation, so every inmate was allowed some form of vanity for their cell. This allowed for a wide variety of different tastes, though not as opulent as some other examples. Mandrill had a hammock, Arnim Zola had a video game system (pong), The Mad Thinker had a chalkboard for him to do work on, and Grey Gargoyle perhaps had it best with an armchair, and tea set to enjoy.
• Darkwing Duck
  • Taurus Bulba in the pilot episode, who connives behind the guards' backs instead of bribing them. His cell is capable of transforming into an executive office, complete with secretary and outside phone line. Then later on you find out he's turned the entire prison into his own flying fortress.
  • Also done in one episode where Darkwing spies on a villain in a minimum-security prison. There's literally no fences or walls, only a loudspeaker thanking the prisoners for not leaving.
  • The super-maximum-security prison that other super-villains are sent to isn't like this, but Quackerjack seems to enjoy being there anyway. As Megavolt remarks to Liquidator and Bushroot when they're all on work duty, "Someone should tell Quackerjack that prison isn't supposed to be fun..."
• DC Animated Universe examples:
  • John Corben, before he becomes Metallo, in Superman: The Animated Series. He has what he has because he didn't rat out Lex Luthor in the first episode, and Luthor makes sure he's well taken care of... so to speak.
  • When Superman needed the Parasite's help to find a bomb, the Parasite was offered a TV inside his cell (with cable, including the premium channels) in exchange for his cooperation.
  • In the episode "Where There's Smoke", Volcana was spared a regular prison and instead isolated on an island, where Superman brought her supplies (this was both for extenuating circumstances and for the protection of other inmates, given her powers); it seemed a tropical paradise, so long as she stayed put, but she clearly did not. She was later seen fighting Supergirl and later sent to a high-security section of Stryker's Island Penitentiary.
  • The Ultrahumanite has one of these in Justice League, albeit it's relatively small. Gourmet food, classical music, TV, books, he has to be heavily bribed by Lex to even consider escaping. And then he agrees to betray Lex and go back anyway in return for Batman doubling Luthor's price... in the form of a charitable "generous donation" to his favorite classical music television channel in the Humanite's name. The channel even thanks him for it on air.
• In one episode of Dexter's Laboratory, his Dad wouldn't hire cable TV, which prompted Dex into building a satellite that (illegally) brought extra channels. When the authorities learned about the fact, they blamed and arrested Dad. When Dexter's Mom went to the precinct where Dad was taken to, she was told he could have left hours ago. Dad was then shown enjoying his cell's TV.
• In The Dragon Prince, Aaravos' prison is, in his own words, "very well appointed." What Viren could see of it through the mirror didn't look to him like a prison at all.
• The above quote is from the DuckTales (1987) episode "The Status Seekers". Charles Upstuck III visits one of these to hire the help of the Beagle Boys who reside in this prison.
  Bonaparte Beagle: Oh, guard! Go pack our bags and tell the warden we've escaped for a week or so.
• Guitierrez in Freakazoid! gets away with this. Except for his toilet. He bullies the warden into giving him everything he wants, including an internet connection... which is how he escapes prison.
• In Gargoyles, Xanatos himself had a private cell on Riker's Island to plot his next scheme. It was no larger than an ordinary prison cell, but it was very nicely appointed, making it more cozy than confined.
• In Home Movies, Brendon's class is taken on a field trip to a prison as part of a Scare 'Em Straight program. However, they took them to a white-collar prison, which the kids considered akin to this trope. Coach McGuirk even remarked that the cells were better than his apartment.
• In The Legend of Korra, Varrick ends up in one of these after he's caught trying to kidnap the President of Republic City. In his case, the prison was built by his own company and he had a custom cell made for him for when he inevitably ends up in jail. It even includes a hang glider for when the opportunity to escape presents itself.
• Played with in a Looney Tunes parody of Judge Judy, in which Sylvester successfully sues Tweety and the bird gets jail time. The prison? His birdcage.
  Tweety: Frankly, I can't tell the difference!
  • He even gets to pull the switch on Sylvester's electric chair. That's right, the plaintiff and defendant are both found guilty. Remember: this is Looney Tunes we're talking about.
• Treated casually in an episode of the Mr. Bean cartoon series, where Mr. Bean ends up in jail due to his Criminal Doppelgänger and his new surroundings include a prisoner who seems to be some sort of crime boss with such accommodations. Throughout the episode, Mr. Bean takes a disapproving attitude towards crooks, but when he escapes, he's easily bribed into aiding that one as well. They take his key, say "I Lied" and leave their cell unattended, which basically becomes the punchline to the episode.
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Birthday Bash" where Princess Morebucks is seen in prison, her cell not only has all the luxuries of home (her home, which is better than most) but in the next scene, when she and Mojo are watching the heroines' birthday party in the common room, she has the other inmates waiting on her hand and foot.
• In an episode of The Real Ghostbusters, the team finds themselves in Ghostworld, where they are caught by the People Busters and jailed in a human-holding containment unit; the hammerspace interior resembles a peaceful, idyllic meadow. (One could fathom thus that their containment unit is a nice place for ghosts, seeing as Ghost World is a dark mirror image of Earth.)
  • This was later confirmed by other parts of the franchise. The containment unit is apparently comparable to a pharaohs tomb or other luxurious eternal resting place. At least one supernatural entity has willingly allowed itself to be imprisoned for that exact reason.
• A short on The Ren & Stimpy Show has Ren and Stimpy breaking into prison for this explicit reason.
• Ricochet Rabbit and Droop-a-Long Coyote had one episode where he has to evict a cowboy prisoner who is quite happy right where he is in the county prison. "Where else can I get a room and three square meals a day, for free?"
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • Played for Laughs. Brightmoon doesn't have an actual prison, so they had to lock a prisoner in the spare bedroom. No one is impressed.
    Queen Angella: We removed the cushions! ...most of the cushions.
  • Gets even worse when they end up with a second prisoner. Not only do they still not have any real prisons, but the only spare room is even bigger, and they didn't have time to remove the cushions. The prisoner thinks they're having a sleepover with their Guards.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer Simpson, as a prison snitch, gets things like a plasma TV, a "Snitch Life" bling chain, and even a Segway from his "Mother".
  • Also Mayor Sideshow Bob is sent to Minimum Security Prison for rigging the election. Looks more like a college campus than a prison. The local prison Harvard rowing team even asked him to join up for a match against Princeton. It's likely that the place is a prison for "white collar" criminals like corrupt businessmen or, in Bob's case, a corrupt politician.
  • In another episode, when Kirk Van Houten was arrested, Chief Wiggum told him the cell he's going to wouldn't be so cold and damp as Van Houten's apartment. In fact, a normal prison cell felt like the trope for him.
  • When the Simpsons go to Japan, Bart and Homer get arrested for a very serious crime: attacking the Emperor however, the prison they were sent to was very nice and luxurious and they appeared to be fed good food and were engaging in artisan crafts like painting and origami.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "The Krusty Slammer", The Krusty Krab was turned into a prison. The prisoners were given all sorts of luxuries such as Krabby Patties and TVs. They even broke into Spongebob's house after they were released because they loved it there. The only exception was Plankton. Some people in comments on YouTube pointed out the similarities to prisons in Norway as seen below.
• Totally Spies!: In the episode Totally Icky, Alex is "arrested" for "littering" on campus and placed in a luxurious suite with comfortable furniture and exercise equipment. She comments that the space is almost as nice as her luxury penthouse dormitory.

Real Life

• Surprisingly enough, Adolf Hitler. After the Beer Hall Putsch he was tried for high treason and sentenced to five years in Festungshaft (literally "fortress confinement"). Festungshaft was a type of jail that excluded forced labor, featured reasonably comfortable cells, and allowed the prisoner to receive visitors almost daily for many hours. It was the customary sentence for people whom the judge believed to have had honourable but misguided motives. While in prison he dictated most of the first volume of Mein Kampf.
• Sharashkas, special prisons in the Soviet Union's Gulag System. As seen in The First Circle, they were used as an incentive for political prisoners with useful scientific and engineering skills. Do well enough, build a lot of nukes and WMD's, and you'll get released. Do bad, and you get kicked down back to the hellish slave labour camps.
• Exile to Siberia in Tsarist Russia wasn't quite prison, but otherwise it tended to fit this trope. Vladimir Lenin actually thought it was one of the best times of his life as the clean Siberian air and country lifestyle left him a lot of spare time for hunting, philosophizing, and other activities and he left it healthier than he entered- and by "left" we mean "of his own free will" as the security was so lax that it didn't take a great deal of planning to get out, and most prominent revolutionaries either did so easily or eschewed it for the relatively comfortable life there. The fact that so many revolutionaries were sent into exile meant that they all tended to form their own communities which helped new arrivals to settle in (or get them fake ID's to escape with); ironically, the Tsarists basically helped them to form their own prototypical Communist societies. Leon Trotsky had a similar if slightly more unpleasant experience, though Josef Stalin - being a known as a violent Diabolical Well-Intentioned Extremist and bank robber (how he collected funds for the revolutionaries) - got exiled into deeper Siberia, which was colder and more barren, but still only required time and effort to escape from. At least once he did so just by hopping on the nearest train!
• A fair number of nobles ended up imprisoned like this. In the Middle Ages, the noble may be related to his captor, and nobles were held prisoner primarily to obtain a ransom. Besides, you never knew if your prisoner would one day be holding you hostage. Better to treat him well and hope he'd return the favor in the future.
• In Real Life most countries operated this as policy (i.e. you had to pay for most things and the more you paid the more you could get) up until round about the 1700 to 1800 period.
• Cocaine king Pablo Escobar's personal quarters were so good that La Catedral, the prison he was held in, was dubbed the Hotel Escobar. He had agreed to "surrender" himself to the authorities under the condition that the extradition laws in Colombia were abolished, which they were after he bribed several members of the Constitutional Court. He ran his affairs there unimpeded until two of his cellmates were murdered in there; the government kicked the doors in but found out that he was tipped beforehand by his cousin (who had a contact in the National Police) and fled. The hunt for him didn't end until he was shot down in the rooftops of Medellin by the police.
• In his memoir Wiseguy (which was adapted into the film Goodfellas), Henry Hill goes into detail about the time he served at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, which was nicknamed "Mafia Manor." How comfy was it? Mobsters got their own special dorm, which was described as looking like a Holiday Inn. Mobsters were allowed to cook their own meals made from gourmet foods smuggled in by the guards. Contraband items like liquor and wine were available in large portions and their recreation room resembled a bar and gambling house. Mobsters didn't have to work if they didn't want to; if they did (for the pay), they could get someone else to do it. And mobsters could use the phone whenever they wanted, and one mobster stored the drugs he was selling in the chaplain's safe. Of course, all of these privileges came at the expense of greasing the palm of the bureaucrat in charge.
• Boss Tweed, an infamously corrupt New York politician, was said to have his own cook and could even come and go as he pleased while in prison. However, he lost these privileges after a short-lived escape in 1875.
• The system of debtors' prisons in England during the Industrial Revolution. They were notoriously corrupt, and while the truly broke had to beg passersby for food (meals weren't included unless you could pay the guards), wealthy and well-connected inmates had furniture and meals brought in from outside, got drunk, had prostitutes brought in at all hours, and generally enjoyed a standard of living that only the landed gentry could afford.
• A caveat noted in William Makepeace Thackeray's historical novel Henry Esmond, is that while the wealthy like the title character could afford a comfortable confinement, it was at a truly exorbitant price. When their money ran out...
• This sort of thing is very common in developing countries. Corrupt politicians practically take over the prisons where they're sent.
• During the War of 1812, American prisoners of war were held in Halifax and allowed to wander around the city as they pleased during the day so long as they returned to their cells in the evening. Not a single man even attempted to flee, and many of them stayed in Halifax after the war ended.
• Taken a step further in The American Civil War. At times when holding or exchanging prisoners of war was unfeasible, captors would often grant prisoners parole: They would be flat out released and free to go in exchange for signing a paper saying that they will not take up arms against their captors again. Of course, if you got caught violating your parole, then things get ugly. This system broke down later in the war, once Grant and the Union realized that a manpower shortage was the South's greatest weakness. They held onto their prisoners, the Confederates responded in kind, and by the end of the war POW camps on both sides were some of the nastiest prisons to be seen until the 20th century^note The most notorious Confederate POW camp, located in Andersonville, Georgia, had a 30% death rate among prisoners, primarily because of diseases that spread rapidly due to overcrowding and because they lacked the resources needed to provide enough food for the prisoners. The commandant of Andersonville was the only person to be hung for war crimes in the Civil War. For comparison the Union camp in Elmira New York had a death rate of about 25% for largely the same reasons (plus a nasty flood); the similarity was not acknowledged for nearly a hundred years and was officially denied during the investigation into the Confederate camps..
• During WWII, after Italy changed side in 1943 and became a "co-belligerent," Italian prisoners of war kept at a camp in northern New Jersey were frequently given weekend passes to stay with Italian families living in Philadelphia. They were no longer prisoners of war because Italy was no longer at war against Allies, but they could not just be released so they were given unusual rights and privileges as, technically, they were no longer "imprisoned."
• Minimum security prisons are more comfortable than max-security ones, for obvious reasons. Oh, and there's that Austrian Max-Sec prison that looks like an art college dorm....
• Norway, with its focus on rehabilitation, is especially famous for its prison-hotels:
  • Bastøy Prison in Norway is basically an island colony with just over a 100 inmates on it, accessible by ferry. The inmates walk free and spend most of their time working the island farms. Even the ferry is operated by one of the inmates and during the night there are only five guards. While most of the inmates are nonviolent, there are some with murder convictions. The most bizarre case is the man who killed another person with a chainsaw. He's the one in charge of all the land clearing on the island, due to his tremendous skill with the chainsaw.
  • Halden Prison: A cell includes amenities such as a television, a refrigerator, unbarred vertical windows that let in more light, and designer furniture. Prisoners share kitchens and living rooms every 10–12 cells, jogging trails, and a sound studio. There are cooking and music classes offered. The guards are typically unarmed because guns "[create] unnecessary intimidation and social distance". Prisoners receive questionnaires that ask how their prison experience can be improved.
  • That case is somewhat justified in that Norway's experimental rehabilitation centres serve as an incentive and teaching tool for good behaviour (brutal Wretched Hive prisons, with all the gangs and torture and other such horrors, only end up punishing good behaviour and reinforcing a nihilist might-makes-right way of life, which in turn encourages criminal behaviour) and encourages sublimation - basically, when bad impulses are satisfied in a more acceptable way. Clearly, the chainsaw guy mentioned earlier likes to rip things up with a chainsaw; they just have to make sure he rips up the right things. Keep in mind that Norway also has one of the lowest criminal recidivism rates in the world, which means that it works — or at least make the prisoners too lazy in Bread and Circuses to be interested in crime.
• The Tower of London was historically used as one of these. Originally, the Tower was a royal residence, so it was also used as a polite prison (the pretense being that the prisoners or hostages were "guests of the king"). After the kings stopped living there in the Tudor period, conditions got worse.
• Napoléon Bonaparte on Elba, where he was made governor and given a 600-strong guard. After Waterloo, the British cut him down a notch and sent him to Saint Helena in the middle of the Atlantic to live in a damp, crumbling manorhouse. It has been theorised that Napoleon's death may have something to do with the arsenic-laced wallpaper in his Saint Helena residence—the place had a damp, humid climate, perfect for funguses to thrive and metabolise on the Scheele's Green pigment to produce toxic gas and thus slowly kill Napoleon. An examination of his body found high arsenic levels, hence the theory (another idea has been that the British, or French Royalists, simply dosed his food to prevent a second escape and war). Others have pointed out that high arsenic levels were fairly standard for most people at the time, being that arsenic was everywhere.
• Al Capone, finally convicted on tax-related charges, began his sentence in a prison where his money and fame brought him all the finer things in life, including the ability to leave if he wanted to. Unfortunately for Al, it all came crashing down when the guards told a visiting official that he was out, but was supposed to return later. Then he was transferred to Alcatraz, had the crap beat out of him by inmates, and eventually lost his mind to dementia caused by syphilis. Which then killed him when he got out. So... crime doesn't pay if you have an undiagnosed case of syphilis.
• When she was imprisoned for tax evasion, "Queen of Mean" Leona Helmsley hired and bullied fellow inmates into waiting on her hand and foot, just like when she ran her hotels. One even served as her personal secretary.
• Teresa Giudice of The Real Housewives of New Jersey was sentenced to 15 months in the clink for embezzlement. Her first request upon sentencing was to be transferred to the set of Orange Is the New Black. It was granted.
  Michael K. Teresa Giudice once said, 'I don't want to live in somebody else's house. That's gross,' so I'm surprised and disappointed in her that she didn't ask the judge to build her a new prison because she doesn't want to live in somebody else's prison. That's gross. (Cut to the judge opening a letter from Teresa claiming that some law states that she has the right to serve her sentence in a new prison built for her because used prisons are gross.)
• Despite having the reputation of a Tailor-Made Prison, the famous Bastille in the pre-Revolutionary France was actually designed to be a prison made of this trope. It was next to impossible to escape and the inmates' identities were a carefully guarded secret, but most of them were political prisoners and noblemen who had caused embarrassment to someone of higher status, most who could expect to be released when their families paid the right people; others were non-violent criminals who had caused the government embarrassment, and a few were simply insane (as an example, when the Bastille was stormed on 14 July 1789, it housed seven prisoners—four forgers, two lunatics, and the "deviant" aristocrat the Comte de Solages—the Marquis de Sade having been moved out of the Bastille to a lunatic asylum ten days earlier; de Sade is himself an example of easy treatment, being a high-ranking noble imprisoned for sodomy and poisoning, and was allowed many luxuries befitting his status—he was moved to the asylum for having yelled to a crowd outside the prison on 2 July that the government was killing prisoners in the Bastille when in fact it was not). Some even rose to high positions in the government after their release, so the wardens were extra careful on how to treat prisoners who could one day become their immediate superiors.
• The 2014 New Bilibid Prison raids in the Philippines found some prisoners luxuriating in carpeted rooms fitted with a 50-inch flat-screen television set, a split-type air conditioner, a home theater system, a sauna facility, a Jacuzzi whirlpool bath, a kitchen with a dining table, wireless Internet access, closed-circuit television cameras and monitors, routers and signal boosters and even a recording studio built by convicted drug kingpin Herbert Colangco, who somehow managed to release a couple or so albums whilst behind bars. Apart from guns, these private dens yielded laptops, cell phones and assorted electronic gadgets, broadband sticks, luxury watches and footwear, expensive liquor, illegal drugs, money-counting machines, and large amounts of cash. To call these quarters "kubol" is to misuse words in order to make their referents invisible. A kubol in Philippine prison language is a tiny makeshift enclosure that symbolically demarcates boundaries more than it offers physical protection against intrusion.Read more. The more high-profile prisoners (e.g. big-time drug-lords and convicted politicians) are the usual offenders of this trope.
• MCI Concord (in Massachusetts) has a building called "The Farm" for minimum-security prisoners. It is an actual farm, with "cells" designed to look like a normal room, and also gives inmates the ability to control their rooms, like turning on/off lights, air conditioning, etc. The Farm allows inmates to learn cooking, and people can even visit a restaurant staffed almost entirely by inmates to eat what they create (corrections officers also dine there). The Farm doesn't even have any walls... but this, in and of itself, is a test.
• The "Vallachi Suite" located at La Tuna Prison in Texas deserves mention. Built in the 60's to hold mob informant Joe Vallachi and isolated from the rest of the prison. While the prisoner is held in a regular cell (with a bed rather than a cot) at night, they get access to adjoining room with sofa's, stereo, television an exercise bike as well as described by one informant a nice kitchen and nice sized bathroom. Though reports about the conditions vary, it's very comfortable living.
• Sollenetuna Prison in Sweden resembles IKEA style apartments than a prison as the inmates have the luxuries to king-sized or full-sized beds with very comfortable mattresses along with their own person bathrooms, a state of the art kitchen to cook meals, their own personal TV and couch along with a state of the art gym for exercise. There's no walls or razor sharp wire fences and the inmates have hotel style windows to view the outside and it's very well insulated with both eco friendly heating and air conditioning systems due to having 6,000 square meters of insulating glass. The prison actually won the 2019 BREEAM Public Projects In-Use award for its eco-friendliness. It also helps that Sweden, just like its neighbor Norway, emphasizes rehabilitation instead of punishment - the recidivism rate is only 40 percent. It's not as low as Norway, but is still significantly better than the usual 70-80 percent seen in other European countries and the United States.
• The Capunchino Jail from Chile was one of the most infamous examples in the country. The convicts could pay to own a private suite. They also had access to a pool, reading rooms, a kitchen where they could cook their own food, a small football field as well as a gym. It mainly housed VIP prisoners such as Corrupt Corporate Executives, Corrupt Politicians, and former high ranked military personnel. The annex was destroyed in a fire in 2005.
• When Venezuelan troops raided Tocorón prison to regain control, they found that the inmates had free run of the place and had their families with them. In fact, the prison had essentially become a family resort with a full-sized baseball diamond, children's play area, and even a zoo with exotic animals. There were also tunnels that allowed inmates to freely go in and out.
• American poisoner Cordelia Botkin initially lived quite comfortably at the San Francisco county jail, receiving numerous privileges, including the ability to leave whenever she wanted provided she came back later, in return for offering sexual favours to the guards. Then the San Francisco earthquake destroyed the main prison and the jail became overcrowded by inmates from that prison being moved there, causing Botkin to lose her old privileges and leading her to be transferred to San Quentin.
• Spree Killer Richard Speck was caught on film in 1996 living it up in prison with his fellow inmates, partying with drugs, money and smuggled contraband and boasting of how much he enjoyed his life in prison.

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