Check your deployment screen to see if any areas are inaccessible. It might be caused by some area of your prison being inaccessible (like some outdoor area or abandoned building you have completely forgotten about) and the staff suffering from extreme compulsion wanting to clean that area you don't care about first. If your janitors are not cleaning the prison but instead just faffing about storage/deliveries/garbage/exports areas, you have a problem. Janitors/workmen/gardeners faffing about the storage room If there are dirty trays on the sink but the cooks aren't operating the sink, hiring a new cook and spawning them directly in front of the sink may help. Placing sinks near where the dirty food trays are left may help. If your staff room (with serving table) or staff canteen (a regular canteen marked as staff-only in deployment) is small and/or the benches/sofas are near a wall, the staff may leave the dirty trays somewhere just outside the staff room. A cook must wash the dirty trays in a sink and put them back on the serving table. This despite dozens of staff meals being available! The problem is in the food trays. If you have enabled (disabled by default) 'staff needs', you may find your staff starving after a while and even demanding a raise and going on strike otherwise. Untested, but for example they might be able to earn money if you allow them to steal and trade contraband. There might be workarounds, but those will probably have unfavorable side effects.

They need to visit a shop to satisfy this need, but if they arrived as a criminally insane inmate (as opposed to becoming one), they typically have very little to no money and they can't work. You generally can't properly cater the 'luxury' needs of your criminally insane inmates. Never allow your prisoners in any area you designated as 'forestry'! There's axes and spades laying around there! Likewise, make sure to mark every room your prisoners don't need to enter as staff-only. No wandering around in the staffroom, get back to your cell Jimmy

Make the laundry room staff-only (deployment) and make sure that the hallway or room it leads into is also staff-only so inmates can't easily slip in with the janitor. Janitors are cheap and the laundry contains rope which somehow can be used to dig tunnels while being impossible to detect with metal detectors or dogs. You may also want to set up a buffer zone for your deliveries area to scan any deliveries before they go into the prison.Дon't use prison labour for the laundry.

It's optional, but this ensures newly arriving inmates are searched for contraband before entering your prison.Д¬luster all rooms containing contraband together (see 'dangers' under 'intelligence') that prisoners may need to access and set up a buffer room with metal detectors and assigned guards and dog handlers between those and the cells. When left unchecked, prisoners without a cell can easily become criminally insane. If 'room quality' is enabled and all your cells are high quality, some prisoners may not be assigned a cell because all the cells are too high in quality for them. Set up a holding cell and padded holding cell, even if you think you have enough cells and/or don't accept criminally insane (psych ward DLC) inmates.

9 Janitors/workmen/gardeners faffing about the storage room.

5 No wandering around in the staffroom, get back to your cell Jimmy.

Prison architect guide