A Prisoner is one of three teams in Jailbreak, and one of the two teams players can select to play as. Escaping the Prison as a Prisoner will allow you to become a Criminal with a Pistol.
Overview
The Prisoner team is the default team a player is placed on when they join the game before picking a team or when they press the switch team button. This means that if a player loads into the game and doesn't choose a team or switches teams and doesn't choose a team, they will always be classified as a Prisoner. However, they can change to the Police team if desired. It is also the only team that players can be forced into, either from a Criminal being arrested, resetting, or from a Police officer repeatedly shooting, killing, or arresting innocent Prisoners.
The main goal of a Prisoner is to escape the Prison and become a Criminal, while avoiding the Police who may try to arrest them. Prisoners and Criminals who have been arrested will be sent to their cells, which they will have to stay inside for 5 seconds before leaving. Once a Prisoner escapes, they become a Criminal and can now rob small stores, start heists, explore the map freely, and purchase and drive various vehicles, all the while avoiding getting arrested or killed by Police.
Escaping
There are plenty of options that allow you to escape the Prison, including but not limited to:
- Punch the punch box on the side of the Prison Gun Shop. After the gate opens, run inside and complete a parkour involving boxes and other decorations.
- To the left of the Prison Gun Shop, there is a wall escape involving C4. To grab a C4, head over to the prison cell block and interact with Rusty.
- Behind the Season contract board in the yard is a wall rigged with two explosives. Requires two players to use.
- Pickpocketing a Police officer and escaping prison via the Prison Parking lot, Watchtowers, or the Visitors Building vent escape.
- Being picked up by an aerial vehicle, or a land vehicle using Rocket Fuel, or via the gate between the Prison Police Station and the Visitors Building.
- Escape via the sewers located next to the Police building and inside the yard.
- Getting another player to help you over the electric Fence by jumping off the player's head.
- Trampoline glitch: Crouching whilst bouncing on the trampoline in the Prison Yard could make you bounce super high, if you get the right method, you can trampoline out of the prison. This is not a glitch, but asimo3089 and badcc have tried to stop it; you may get teleported back. There was also a chance that you could be flung into the out-of-bounds zone behind the prison, and you would slowly take damage until you die or re-enter the map. If you did die, you would revert to a Prisoner. Patches have made this near-impossible to perform, however still possible.
Obtaining a Keycard
You can obtain a keycard by pickpocketing a Police officer by pressing and holding E at the Police officer's back. You can either steal it and run the risk of being arrested, or you can bribe (give cash to) the officer, which will give you 45 seconds to steal the officer's card without being arrested by them. You could also receive a pistol or a Donut. A Police officer has a 25% chance that they will drop a keycard when killed. Even if you pickpocket a Police officer and don't receive a keycard, they are still able to arrest you. You can also obtain a keycard by grabbing a random crate in the Cargo Plane. It is, however, only a 1/7 chance of obtaining it. To increase your chances of obtaining a keycard from the plane, you could check through multiple crates.
Obtaining Weapons
Obtaining a weapon while in Prison can be quite difficult. There are four ways to get your hands on a weapon.
- Pickpocket Police. There is a chance that you will get a pistol instead of a keycard/donut.
- A Police officer is killed by another player and drops a pistol.
- Gain access to the Security Office or the Prison Police Station by either having a keycard, following a Police officer into the location, or following another Prisoner/Criminal (who has a keycard) into the location. If you manage to get your hands on a weapon, you can kill the Police. Going to the Security Office is a bit safer, considering Police only spawn there during cell time. However, going into a Police Station gets you a Police uniform, which can be used to possibly blend in with Police. Also, if you have the SWAT Gamepass, the Rifle, which is an automatic weapon.
- Receiving a Pistol from the Rusty NPC.
Tips
There are not a lot of tips for Prisoners, as they are very limited in what they can do. There is one tip that every Prisoner should follow:
- Escape: Prisoners have one major goal, get out of the Prison. Use any tool you find to your advantage, and don't get caught by Police.
Trivia
- There was a bug where Prisoners would not spawn with a prison jumpsuit.
- This happened most often when BOSS Gamepass owners were arrested,
- If the player was arrested and did not die, they will not be sent to prison in their jumpsuit.
- If a player has an avatar with a layered jacket, the prison jumpsuit will not be visible underneath.
- This issue was patched in the 2025 Winter Update.
- Prisoners spawn with nothing in their inventory.
- There was a glitch that let you spawn with Police items, This has been patched since you can no longer switch teams mid-arrest.
- In the Winter 2022 Update, players could spawn with an invite to the mansion in their inventory, assuming they have one.
- This was also removed when Mansion invites were made into consumables instead of items.
- Sometimes, when you change teams, your game glitches, and you stay as a Criminal but you have handcuffs and a taser.
- You cannot use the handcuffs or the taser if that glitch happens, even though they are in your inventory.
- This happens when the player has a very bad connection to the server.
- Prisoners used to be able to spawn in the Cells, the Cafeteria, or in the Yard, but as of the 2023 Prison Revamp, they can only spawn in the yard.
- Prisoners can still spawn in the Cells if they reset.
- If a Police officer shoots an innocent Prisoner, they will be given a warning. If they attempt to arrest, they will receive a warning and be fined
25.
- If the innocent player dies, then the Police officer will become a Prisoner if enough warnings have been given.
- If you own the BOSS Gamepass, your avatar will change out of the prison jumpsuit to your normal avatar clothing the moment you become a Criminal.
- When the Military Base housed the Maximum Security Prison, walking out of the cell immediately turned you into a Criminal. In a later miscellaneous update, you would remain a Prisoner until you escaped the Military Base.
- When Bounty Island was added, you had to travel back to the mainland to rejoin the Criminal team.
- As of the Season 17 Update, the Maximum Security Prison is located within the actual Prison itself.
- Prisoners could get followed by the watchtower lights if there was a cop on the tower. This feature was removed in the Prison Update.
- This feature returned in the 2023 Prison Revamp, but the watchtower lights now automatically target Criminals.
- If you try to reset your character as a Criminal or Prisoner, you will teleport back to your cell, which will be locked for 5 seconds. If you had a bounty, it would go to any nearby Police officer.
- This also happens when a Criminal leaves the game or switches teams near a cop.
- Prisoners cannot use the mobile garage to spawn vehicles, although they can customize vehicles.
- Until the Nukes Update, players were previously able to reset and go back to their cells if they were in the Bounty Island prison.
- In the Maximum Security Prison, you can kill yourself with lasers or reset and respawn at the normal Prison.
- If a Prisoner was arrested with Police attire, they will spawn in their cell with the attire still on. This also applies to Crime BOSS clothes. However, if you reset your character or die, you will go back to your prison jumpsuit.
- The Prisoner's "innocent zone" extends outside the Prison sometimes if the Prisoner has not escaped yet. This prevents Police from arresting Prisoners who are attempting an escape.
- Prisoners cannot pickpocket Police while in their cells or when they are arrested.
- The most well known Prisoner/Criminal is Badimo (Not to be confused with the Group), who is a Roblox account that was originally terminated for over 6 years.
- The account was unbanned on December 13, 2023, but it is unknown why the account got terminated.
- It is important to note that this is not an official Badimo Roblox account, as noted by asimo3089 on Twitter.
- He appeared in many of Jailbreak's old update wallpapers and thumbnails.
- His final appearance in a Jailbreak thumbnail was in the Sewer Escape Update of May 20th, 2018.
- Since then, he had stopped appearing in any of the later Jailbreak thumbnails.
- Prisoners can have bounties if they kill Police after obtaining a weapon; however it will not show up on the bounty board or on their screen, but if they are arrested or escape, it will show the bounty they have/had.
- A Prisoner cannot equip SWAT Attire in the Prison Police Station even if they have the SWAT Gamepass, because they are not Police officers.
- This is the same with Police officers not being able to equip BOSS attire.
- There is a rare glitch in some servers where the player, as a Prisoner, starts walking on their own very slowly. This can be fixed by switching teams.
- In the 2023 Prison Update, you could climb up the American flag.
- This was thought to be not a glitch, as there was one you could climb up in the first version of the Military Base.
- However, it was patched in the 2023 5 Days of Vehicles update.
- This was thought to be not a glitch, as there was one you could climb up in the first version of the Military Base.