Joint Venture

The only honest job in the joint is the one behind the counter. This isn't it.

Welcome to the commissary at Las Almas State Penitentiary. You run it. By day you fill orders for the most dangerous clientele in the state; by night you move what the warden's catalog doesn't carry. Every transaction is a small decision about who you'd rather disappoint: the inmates who can shank you, or the guards who can fire you.

RUN THE COMMISSARY

Take orders at the window, pull stock from the shelves, work the terminal, and keep the line moving. Order inventory, restock the shelves, sweep the floor before inspection, and squeeze a profit out of ramen, mackerel, and soap. The legit job pays the bills. Barely.

FOLLOW THE RULES AND REJECT RULE BREAKERS

Every customer comes to the window with an ID, and not every ID checks out: match the photo, the name, and the prisoner number before you serve, because a mismatch or a forgery is a write-up waiting to happen. The guards hand down fresh rules every morning, and you're the one who has to enforce them: no service to D-Block today, limited stock per inmate, or more. Some days the yard riots and half your customers never reach the window. Read the day's rules, check every face against them, and turn away the ones who don't qualify, even the regulars who'll make you pay for it.

WORK THE SIDEHUSTLE

Drugs, shivs, nudie mags, smuggled phones. There's a market for everything inside, and you're the only store in the building. Buy low from your supplier, sell high to the yard, and grow a black-market operation one risky handoff at a time. The margins are incredible. So is the sentence if you're caught.

BEAT THE HEAT

Cameras that never blink. A patrol guard who stops to watch. Random spot-checks. An x-ray scanner at the end of every shift. Cover the camera, read the patrol, stash the goods in your pocket, and pray today isn't a search day. Get sloppy and the fines stack, your guard rep tanks, and the scanner starts beeping. Your prison pocket is the safest place to hide and smuggle objects.

MANAGE YOUR REP

Your prisoner rep keeps you protected and your customers loyal. Your guard rep keeps you employed and the searches gentle. Almost every choice trades one for the other: undercharge a regular and the yard loves you, but the guard watching just saw it. Let either hit zero and you're done: fired, or shanked.

STACK CASH AND PLAN YOUR WAY OUT

This is a job with an exit strategy. Smuggle the right parts past the scanner, build your tools in the quiet of your cell, bribe the right people, and assemble everything you need to walk out of Las Almas for good. The catch: every part you carry is a part that can get you caught.

KEY FEATURES

• 50+ named regulars — every inmate has a face, a grudge, and very specific opinions about ramen, from gentle giants to motormouth hustlers to the guy who counts the cameras out loud

• Three crews, one store — the yard's factions each need something only you can stock; pick your side in prison politics and live with what that costs you

• Hands-on, first-person shopkeeping — grab it, ring it, bag it, slide it under the glass; every sale (and every smuggle) happens in your own two hands

• Two economies, one building — deadpan institutional bureaucracy above the counter, a thriving, ridiculous criminal marketplace under it