"All I wanted was just to eat good food for no effort. Joined the bandits, then ended here. And you know what? This is much better than I imagined. I wish I was arrested sooner."
— Rubber Prison inmate, Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
Imprisonment is something that most people want to avoid. Between the constant surveillance, the cheap, low-grade food, the oftentimes violent fellow inmates, not seeing friends and loved ones, and being confined to a cell, prison is an unpleasant and undesirable destination.
But there are some people who find imprisonment more desirable than other available alternatives. Perhaps they're homeless vagrants, worn-out laborers, or other kinds of down-on-their-luck lumpenprolesnote , tired of being hungry and sleeping on the street. They might find the three hot meals a day in prison to be preferable to the insecurities of the "real world".
Other times, released convicts found a group of True Companions in prison, and desire to be reunited with their pals. Or maybe they managed to rise up in the prison hierarchy, gaining a position of respect running the Black Market, but outside the jail, they're discriminated against and seen as a lowly ex-con who's only good for the worst, lowest-paid jobs. Whatever the reasons, these characters are so eager to get back in jail that they'll commit crimes and let themselves get caught just to make that happen.
Some Must Make Amends and believe that it's right for them to be jailed for their crimes. Often these could bust out, and may even have friends or allies trying to help them escape, but they refuse, unless given a good enough reason anyway.
These prison-seeking people will almost never end up in a Luxury Prison Suite with fancy amenities (not by normal standards anyway), as these fancy suites are for mob bosses and influential CEOs convicted of insider trading. At the same time, the prison they seek will not be a Hellhole Prison either; it will be the lowest-security prison that they can use their connections to arrange.
Often goes hand-in-hand with Self-Restraint. Compare Not Used to Freedom (where the character simply doesn't know how to cope outside the structure of the institution), Prefer Jail to the Protagonist (when a criminal deliberately gets sent to prison to avoid another character), and Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All (when being in prison doesn't interfere with their activities). A subtrope of Get into Jail Free and Unishment. Contrast Never Going Back to Prison.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: The mafia capo Polpo is serving a sentence in jail, but it turns out he actually prefers living this way and does not attempt to leave. It helps that he has plenty of food and trinkets stored away in his private cell (he even has a stock of wine he offers to share with visitors), and his Stand Black Sabbath is perfectly suited to carrying out his tasks for the Boss without him ever having to move.
- Shiyakusho: Chapter 5 features Egoshi Nobuyuki, a former convenience store clerk who hated working. One day, he found a magazine describing the work-free life of a death row inmate and decides to become one. How? By running down a ton of elementary schoolers with a car, killing five and injuring twelve, and then confessing to the crime without a shred of remorse, making himself a death row inmate for the next six years before being executed. When Egoshi ends up pushing Shimura's buttons enough to make him drop his Perpetual Smiler act, the latter calls him scum and sentences Egoshi to wandering in the Asphodel Fields (basically a form of Hell) for all eternity.
Comic Books
- Batman: No Man's Land: Many people in semi post-apocalyptic Gotham want to be let into Blackgate Prison, which is much safer than most of Gotham, and at least has food.
- In the Judge Dredd story "Casey's Day Out", the titular Casey is released after a twenty-year Iso-Cube sentence for attempted murder. Unfortunately for him while he was incarcerated the victim of his attempt has grown extremely rich and powerful and is holding a grudge. After dodging half a dozen assassination attempts and barely escaping with his life even with Dredd bodyguarding him, Casey has had enough and pleads with Dredd to take him back to the Iso-Cubes, as at least he was safe there. Dredd refuses, citing the fact that as Casey hasn't broken the law, he cannot legally return him to the cubes. Casey then punches Dredd, as assaulting a Judge is a serious crime with a ten-year sentence and allows Dredd to arrest him so he can be returned to the cubes. Dredd for his part doesn't hold a grudge against Casey (normally anyone taking a swing at Dredd gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown), takes the punch that he could easily have dodged, and gives Casey what he wants.
- In one Lucky Luke story (probably "Dalton City"), convict Joe Milton is distressed when he learns he's released for good behavior. To the point that when the Dalton inevitably escape, he uses the opportunity to sneak back in.
- Transformers: Robots in Disguise: After he confesses all of the crimes he committed as Ruler of Cybertron, Starscream is sentenced to life in prison. Thoroughly sick of The Chains of Commanding, he's happy to sit around and mope without any responsibilities.
- Rocky (1998): Rocky's brother Dan spent some time in prison for drug smuggling, and enjoyed it far more than his messy, chaotic life on the outside, since in prison, his entire day was scheduled by other people. It probably helped that Swedish prison cells are basically like tiny apartments, at least the low-security ones he was put in. Rocky even compares it to a glorified daycare for washouts.
Rocky: They really sentenced the wrong person to six months of Adult Childhood.
- Wonder Woman (1942): Rebla so enjoyed her stay in Eros' prison that she protested when released, then had the people she was put in charge of build a prison of their own to put her in.
Fan Works
- Karma Overbalance: In this Recursive Fanfiction to The Karma of Lies, Adrien makes clear to Marinette that he's looking forward to being imprisoned for murdering Lila, as he'd long since given up on salvaging his civilian life after being Convicted by Public Opinion due to the previous story's events. Marinette is horrified and remorseful, as her attempt to pull off a Paranoia Gambit on Lila unintentionally set this into motion, and she's left wondering whether Karma will punish her next.
Film - Live-Action
- Back to the Future (1985): Implied with Marty's uncle "Jailbird" Joey. Not only is he constantly in prison, but apparently as a baby he would start crying if taken out of his crib. Even in the good future, where Marty changes his parents' lives for the better, the sequel states that Joey is still in prison.
- 101 Dalmatians (1996): After all the travails that Horace and Jasper have gone through, from freezing cold to electrocution of the groin, they're effusively thankful to see police cars ready to arrest them, handing themselves in very courteously and then basking in the quiet heated interior of the wagon — until they realise who else is sharing it with them.
- Death Race: The Old Convict Coach actually completed his sentence years before, but stays in prison anyway because he doesn't have anywhere else to go.
- Greenfingers: Colin has been in prison for 15 years, since he was 17, and comes to enjoy the gardening group there. He quickly pulls a Get into Jail Free after he's paroled because he's Not Used to Freedom and wants to help with the prison's entry to the garden competition.
- In Henry's Crime, Max is a Con Man who has grown far too comfortable with the familiarity and security of his "idyllic" life behind bars, to the extent that he deliberately screws up his parole hearings so he will not be released.
- The Shawshank Redemption: The Old Convict Brooks sees prison as his whole life after spending 50 years there, so he even tries to attack a fellow inmate in an attempt to avoid being paroled. When he's released anyway, he soon kills himself.
Red: These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. After long enough, you get so you depend on 'em. That's institutionalized.
- Small Town Santa: Near the beginning of the movie, local homeless man Raynor comes into the sheriff's office asking to be locked up. He admits to being the one who stole the Baby Jesus doll from the church, which is corroborated by him having it when he comes in. They all know he's doing it because he wants to spend Christmas in the sheriff office jail cell, where he'll have a free meal and a roof over his head. They lock him up anyway, and he spends the bulk of the movie there.
- In Some Guy Who Kills People, Sheriff Fuller asks Ben why he was willing to take the fall for crimes he hadn't committed, and Ben replies that everything on the outside is so confusing that being sent back to the asylum where there is order and routine seemed like a good option.
Literature
- In Isaac Asimov's "Breeds There a Man...?", Dr. Ralston deliberately gets himself jailed in the hope that a prison environment will prevent him from acting on his suicidal urges.
- The homeless protagonist of the O. Henry story "The Cop and the Anthem" keeps committing minor crimes to get jailed so he can spend the winter off the streets, but keeps getting let off out of Christmas spirit. In the end, a church hymn inspires him to turn his life around... and then a passing cop arrests him for loitering.
- Discworld: "Done It Duncan", introduced in The Fifth Elephant, is an inept street thief who makes a career out of confessing to every crime he ever hears about (and many he hasn't), in exchange for the decent food and relative comfort of a prison cell. (The City Watch plays along, since he tends to tell them who actually committed the crime(s) he's confessing to, of the form "It wasn't X that did Y, it was me.")
- The First Law: In Best Served Cold (2009), the counting-obsessed convict Friendly spent most of his life in a prison called Safety (because it protects society from its inhabitants) and misses the order and security of that existence, and at the end of the novel, considers checking himself back in. In a later book in the series, Red Country, Friendly is elated when he is arrested along with the other villains of the novel.
- In the novel The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules, 79-year-old Martha Andersson and her four friends (collectively known as The League of Pensioners) enact a plan to break out of their lifeless, dreary care home and have themselves arrested and taken to a reasonable Stockholm prison via a grand art theft under the belief that their treatment in prison would be much better than the aforementioned care home. It isn't quite what they expect, however, so they come up with another plan to escape prison and live a luxurious life on the run.
- Living Dead Girl: Alice's kidnapper Ray threatens to burn down her parents' house with them and her newborn baby sister inside and frame her should she defy him. Alice begins to entertain the idea of going there, getting the family out, and burning it down herself, as not only would she be away from Ray after being caught, but she would have the opportunity to eat regularly (as Ray had been starving her since she hit puberty to keep her looking like a child) and grow into a mature figure, making her less desirable to him.
Alice: Ray will not come for me if the police have me... I will stay in jail until I am old, twenty-five, thirty, eat all I can and hope I swell up, grow into breasts and hips and belly like his mother's wide white girth. Then, if he comes, he will not want me. I will be safe.
- Mitch Tobin: The 3rd book takes place at a halfway house of sorts, easing recently discharged mental patients back into society. Many of them seem apprehensive, or outright not ready and one has spent years hiding in the attic and just mingling with newcomers who don't know he doesn't belong there due to having nowhere else to go and having developed an attachment to the place.
- This is a Discussed Trope in the 19th century novel The Mysteries Of Paris. Rodolphe, a nobleman disguised as a workingman befriends two lowly Parisians, "The Slasher", a drifter who is prone to fits of being Ax-Crazy, and Songbird, a Hooker with a Heart of Gold. The thing that convinces Rodolphe of their good nature is that both have never stolen, because of moral qualms. When he questions whether they avoided stealing because of fear of imprisonment, they laugh, telling him that in prison they would have the shelter and regular meals that they don't have access to on the outside.
Live-Action TV
- The first episode of Arrested Development ends with Michael discovering that his father is starting to enjoy prison life, since he doesn't have any real responsibilities and spends his days eating ice cream sandwiches and playing baseball in the yard. Although he changes his mind when a guy gets murdered in front of him and becomes desperate to get out.
Michael: You like it here?
George Sr: Oh, I'm having the time of my life! - Breaking Bad: Saul Goodman hires James Edward "Jimmy In-'N-Out" Kilkelly to do a job for Walt and Jesse. Jimmy feels more comfortable inside prison and offers to be arrested in other criminals' place for a fee, and serve out whatever term they would be sentenced for.
- Played for tragedy in an episode of CSI: an elderly homeless man decides to try to go to jail so he will spend a few days away from the harsh Nevada winter. However, the cop he assaults to try to do so had experience with similar homeless people doing this to him, so he lets the man go while still handcuffed. The cop expected it to be a humiliating but humbling experience for the homeless man. Instead, it gets him killed when he has an accident he cannot get himself out of because of his bound hands, which gets the cop arrested for manslaughter and Grissom bluntly telling him that it would have cost him nothing to offer the dead man a ride to a homeless shelter.
- Hannibal has a dark variant in "Trou Normand": an aging Serial Killer lets himself be caught because "Prison is going to be a luxury next to the kind of retirement home I can afford."
- Janus 1994. Shirl Hennessey gets so tired of her crazy family she's willing to go to jail rather than fight the charges when she's arrested carrying a concealed weapon. This leads to an amusing scene where she has to repeatedly stop her barrister in court as he tries to get the sentence reduced.
- Killing Eve: While in prison to carry out an assassination, Villanelle meets Agniya, who was jailed for "violent outbursts". Despite her issues, when she gets caught up in Villanelle's prison break, she says she doesn't want to be free... which, unfortunately, makes her the only loose end.
- My Name Is Earl: When Earl goes to prison, he meets someone he knew as a child, who has been in prison so long that he sabotages his every chance at parole because he is afraid of life on the outside.
- The Onion News Network has Autistic Reporter Michael Falk, who becomes enamored with the rigid routine of prison life when sent to interview a white-collar criminal.
Brian Wasserman: You see, it takes its toll on you. You wear the same clothes every day, you live in this tiny little box, and there's hardly any human contact-
Autistic Reporter Michael Falk: How do I get to live here? - The Red Skelton Show: Played for Laughs in the adaptation of the O. Henry story "The Cop and the Anthem". Freddie the Freeloader plans to celebrate Christmas by running up a huge bill at a fancy restaurant, admitting he's broke, and getting sent to the relative comfort of prison. However, people keep letting him off the hook out of Christmas spirit. Ironically, as soon as he feels inspired to get a job and make something of his life, he's arrested for loitering.
Freddie: Warm cells, soft mattresses, three square meals a day... if I get there in time, I can hang my stocking up with the rest of the fellas!
- The Shield: A former gang leader is released after a long sentence, but the gang has moved forward with new leadership and he holds low status compared to his time in prison where he was well respected and had several lucrative enterprises. He ends up killing the new gang leader both to get revenge and to return to his life as a prison shot caller.
- Played for Laughs in The Wire. A group of low-level Barksdale gangbangers, including the nagging girlfriend of one of them, are arrested in a sting. As they are waiting to be processed in the station the woman continues to berate her boyfriend, who leans over to the guy next to him and whispers "I can't wait to go to jail".
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: In the "Prisoner 13" one-shot from Keys from the Golden Vault, the titular prisoner — locked in Revel's End, with the initial goal being to break her out for a magic key she has to her treasure stash — reveals that she's actually quite comfortable in prison, given that she's an overseer of the criminal underworld with long-distance telepathic abilities, being able to still conduct her business while the isolated prison keeps her safe from enemies. She cuts a deal with the party to hand over the key in exchange for the warden's ledger documenting the prison's inmate history, otherwise having no intent to leave and resisting any attempts to be broken out.
- Monopoly: When most of the properties have been bought, it becomes preferable to spend as much time as possible in jail, as you can collect rent and trade without the risks of circling the board.
Video Games
- In the Playable Epilogue of Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling, the party can revisit Rubber Prison and talk to a cricket bandit who admits the only reason he turned to crime was that he thought it would be the easiest way to get decent food without trying. But because the Ant Kingdom treats its criminals well, he's surprised to find that he got what he wanted in prison.
- Day of the Tentacle: In the Bad Future, the Edisons are kept as slaves by the ruling tentacles. They are content with the little they got and prefer it to the wilderness outside. Your task is to force them to escape.
- It's mentioned in the lore of Fallout that in the years before the Great War, America was facing major shortages of basically everything, and rioters would attack the police or National Guard personnel, hoping to get sent to prisons where they'd be fed.
- In Genshin Impact, the Fortress of Meropide is an underwater penal colony that serves as Fontaine's prison. While originally a Hellhole Prison, due to the reforms made by the current warden Wriothesley (himself a former inmate) it's become a wholly functional society where most people can actually make a decent life for themselves provided that they put in the work to earn their keep. As such, there are some who even choose to stay after their sentence is up.
- In RoboCop: Rogue City, if Robocop manages to arrest Mitchell, it turns out that he actually enjoys being in prison since all he really wants is a place where he can do laundry (which for him is his way of relaxing).
- Street Fighter has Cody, the former protagonist of Final Fight who's landed in jail after the game's events for assault. Due to personal guilt and an addiction to fighting, he willingly stays there despite being able to break out at any time with his strength. He only escapes to confront Seth in Street Fighter IV and is finally pardoned in Street Fighter V by Mayor Haggar, who appoints him the new mayor and encourages him to clean up his act.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney: In the final case of Trials and Tribulations, after Iris is arrested for murder, Larry, who's smitten with her, contemplates stealing Detective Gumshoe's wallet in order to follow her there, then decides against it because he "can't do that to someone who looks like he's down on his luck."
Larry: Whenever I find a girl I like, they always run away! I even chased one of them to Tibet... Next it's going to be prison, I guess.
Web Original
- A Heist with Markiplier: Yancy is the top dog among the prisoners at Happy Trails Penitentiary who scoffs at the idea of a jailbreak because he believes that he has it better than if he were a free man. He even sings an entire song about it, "I Don't Wanna be Free".
- Homestar Runner: In the "Blubb-O's Commercial" short, Coach Z (who is usually depicted living in the locker room of a gym) makes aggressive comments toward kids while dressed as the Blubb-O's mascot in a bid to get arrested for this reason.
Coach Z: Hey there kids, I'm the drive-thru whale! I'll chop off your legs!
Strong Sad: Sometimes it seems like you're trying to go to prison, Coach Z.
Coach Z: Hey! Three square meals a day! - This video by The Onion shows a reporter with Hollywood Autism who wants to go to prison because the rigid schedule appeals to him.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: The criminals from "Man in the Moonbounce" see their prison as a "camp for adults", since they can freely roam the facility and engage in many leisure activities. They actively seek to prolong their sentences as much as possible in order to avoid having to deal with the responsibilities that come with being free men.
- In The Blunders, all three members of the Bugs Meringue gang become nostalgic for their prison cell after being awakened by the loud banging noises Ma and Pa are making from downstairs while they themselves are only trying to sleep. To comfort themselves, they sing a prison-themed parody of "Home on the Range."
- Chowder: At the end of the episode "Lollistops", Chowder and Gazpacho are arrested for the trouble Chowder caused at the dentistry for lollipops. Chowder claims that he would never let food cloud his judgment ever again, but after tasting prison food, he wants to stay there forever, much to Gazpacho's dismay.
- C.O.P.S. (1988): Rock Krusher is Dumb Muscle who enjoys the simple life in prison, so he lives there willingly until the next time Big Boss needs him.
- In the Duckman episode "A Room With a Bellevue", Duckman becomes absolutely fed up with the chaotic incompetence, corruption, and overall boorish apathy of everyday life and ends up arrested after a furious public outburst. In court, he pleads insanity, gets thrown into an insane asylum, and learns to enjoy the routine and structure enough that he eventually decides he wants to stay forever.
- Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats: Heathcliff's dad Pop loves his life in prison. In "A Piece of the Rock", when he's taken back there, he contently calls it home, and when Heathcliff says he's going to break him out of there, Pop shoots this suggestion down.
- The Looney Tunes Show: Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are both sent to prison for contempt of court, and when they both escape, Bugs tries to convince Daffy to turn them both in, because Bugs thought prison was the best thing to ever happen to him.
- The Loud House: Downplayed, as it's community service and not actual jail, but in the episode "Rita Her Rights", Rita comes to enjoy performing community service as it keeps her away from her chaotic household and allows her to have some peace and quiet.
- Pippi Longstocking: Those Two Guys, Thunder-Karlsson and Bloom, are due to be released on a dreary, rainy day, so they insist on staying in their cell until it stops raining. Of course, they change their minds once they hear of Pippi's stash of gold coins.
- Parodied in Robot Chicken: one sketch shows an alternate ending to Thelma & Louise in which they survived driving their car into the Grand Canyon, but the pain of the injuries they acquired from the fall is such that they agree that their suicide attempt was a very stupid decision and they should have let the cops arrest them.
- The Simpsons
- In Orange is the New Yellow, Marge is arrested for perceived parental negligence, and finds that prison is a vacation compared to her needy and overbearing family. So much so that rather than giving up her time to read, garden, exercise, and go to sleep early, she discharges a guard's gun just to stay in the big house for longer.
- In Chief of Hearts, Homer is sentenced to 100 hours of community service after causing a commotion in the bank where he was mistaken for a robber. He begs to be sent to prison instead.
Homer: Community service? But...that's work! What about jail!?Judge Harm: (Bangs gavel) Community service!Homer: No, I wanna go to jail! Free food! Teardrop tattoos! Library books that come to you! I'll serve anything but the community!
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In the episode "Doing Time," Mrs. Puff enjoys her time in jail, especially since it keeps her far away from SpongeBob as possible.
- Wolverine and the X-Men (2009): "Time Bomb" features Nitro, a mutant with the uncontrollable power to explode. He accepts confinement in prison not because he likes it there, but because it's the best way to keep him from hurting other people.
Real Life
- A.U.E. (arestantskiy uklad edin, roughly translated as "Prisoner's way of life is uniform" or "Prisoners' Thug Unity") is a Russian teenage delinquent subculture that romanticizes crime and prison life.
- Darko Desic, a Yugoslavian immigrant to Australia, was arrested in 1991 for growing marijuana. He broke out of prison in 1992, partway through his three-and-a-half year sentence, because he was afraid he would be deported once his sentence was up and then punished in his home country for not doing compulsory military service. He spent the next few decades keeping a low profile as a handyman around Sydney's Northern Beaches area. But the lockdowns and social distancing of the COVID-19 Pandemic prevented him from working, which resulted in him having to spend his nights sleeping on beaches. In September of 2021, he decided to turn himself in so that he would at least have food and shelter.
- The elder care system in Japan is often strained due to an aging and shrinking population. Seniors who lack resources or children to care for them will sometimes deliberately get themselves arrested for minor crimes, since prison at least guarantees them food, shelter and medical care.
- In the United States, the prohibitively high costs of healthcare has led to this on occasion (particularly in federal prisons, which are generally considered to have far better conditions and higher-quality healthcare than prisons run by the states). In 2012, Frank Morrocco, a 57-year-old parolee who had been released after serving 20 years in federal prison on drug charges, deliberately shoplifted $23 worth of goods from a shop in Amherst, New York, in full view of the shop's employees and customers, so that he would violate his parole and be sent back to prison. Morrocco suffered from leukemia, and while he couldn't afford health insurance, he was considered to be making far too much to qualify for Medicaid.
