What it is
Getting arrested on Roleplay Project is a scene, not a teleport. An officer cuffs you, searches you, drives you to the station and books you at a desk where every charge comes from the penal code with a real range of months, fines and bail. You enter a plea, you are put in a cell with other prisoners, and a strip on your HUD counts down the time. While you serve it you can work a prison job to shorten it, buy from the commissary, receive visitors, apply for parole at the halfway point or, on lesser charges, pay bail and walk out.
Time is fair. Your sentence only runs while you are actually playing that character in the cell; logging off or switching to another character pauses it. Moving around your cell block serves time five times faster than standing still. Nothing is served for you while you are away, and nothing is lost either.
This guide is written for the person in the cuffs. The laws themselves, with every charge and its range, are on the laws pages, and the rules officers must follow are in the server rules.
How to start
Nobody starts an arrest on purpose, but it helps to know the shape of one before it happens. Every arrest goes through the same stages and you can see which one you are at.
Stage | What you see |
|---|---|
Cuffed | The cuff animation, and everyone nearby sees the cuffs on you |
Searched | The officer's Search panel lists what you are carrying; illegal items go to the evidence locker, everything else into a property bag that you get back on release |
Transporting | You are seated in the police vehicle |
At desk | The officer reaches the custody desk at Mission Row or the SAHP station |
Booked | The desk is submitted and the plea panel opens for you |
If the officer disconnects mid-arrest you are handed to another on-duty officer of the same agency nearby, or released if there is nobody. An arrest that is abandoned, for any reason, returns your property bag automatically.
Keep your identity card; it is never seized. Cash on you is taken and returned on release. The illegal items go to the evidence locker and do not come back.
NPCs from police calls can be arrested and taken into custody too. An officer chooses "Take into custody" in the scene panel (/onscene): the NPC is walked to the back of the officer's car and booked in once the car is driven 150 m from the scene, or, with no car to hand, a prisoner transport collects them after about 20 seconds.
Step by step
- The booking desk
The officer searches the penal code and adds charges with a count and a fine within each charge's range. A live summary on the right shows the sentence range in months, the fines, whether bail is available and how much, any warrants against you, and the property being seized. A mugshot is taken for your record. Charges that carry no jail time are infractions: you are fined and uncuffed with no custody.
- Enter your plea
The plea panel offers guilty, not guilty and no contest, and a bail button where bail is available. Guilty serves the minimum of the range. Not guilty holds you for the maximum pending court. No contest serves the maximum. You have fifteen minutes; with no plea the maximum applies. Felony charges have no bail and hold you until the court hears the case.
- Understand the strip
The prison HUD strip shows your remaining time, cell and agency, plea, the "5x while moving" reminder, your good behaviour points and commissary credit, a parole bar and a prompt for the cell menu. When your sentence is paused the number is replaced by a label saying why.
- Serve the time
One month of sentence is 1,440 minutes standing still or 288 minutes on your feet, so walk.
/cellsshows your block, who is in each cell, your charges and quick buttons to parole, jobs, commissary and visits. You earn one good behaviour point for every ten minutes online without an escape flag or an admin hold. - Shorten it
/prisonjobstarts laundry, kitchen or yard work: press E at the marker, wait out the bar, repeat. Each unit takes seconds off the sentence and adds commissary credit, up to a quarter of the sentence in total. At halfway, with three good behaviour points and no felony,/parolelets you request release; an officer decides in the MDC and, if granted, you finish the remaining time on parole outside. - Walk out
Release is one of: time served, bail paid, parole granted, an early or court release by an officer, or charges dropped. You are taken to the front desk, your property bag is returned, cash is credited back and every custody panel closes. If your inventory is too full for the bag, it stays held at the front desk until there is room.
Sentences, pausing and switching character
Sentence time is counted in seconds while you are online, in the cell, on that character. The state of your sentence is always one of these:
State | What it means | Time counts |
|---|---|---|
Online | You are in the cell playing this character | Yes, 5x while moving |
Offline | You logged out | No |
Switched | You used | No |
Pending plea | The plea panel is open, fifteen minute limit | No |
Court hold | Awaiting a court hearing | No |
Escaped | You left the station and were flagged | No, the clock is stopped |
Paroled | Serving the rest outside on parole | Yes, at 1x, anywhere |
/changechar is allowed from a cell. Your character card on the select screen shows "In custody, timer paused" and picking it again spawns you straight back into a free cell of your block with the same time left. Playing a different character does not serve the sentence; that is deliberate. A prisoner who is offline does not hold a cell slot, so you will not come back to "every cell is full".
Parole
Parole is available once you have served half your sentence, have at least three good behaviour points, are not in on a felony and have no escape flag. /parole opens the panel, shows how long until the halfway point, and lets you request it. Every on-duty officer of the agency with full MDC access is told, and one of them grants or denies it with a note; the strip shows "Parole available" when you reach the bar.
On parole you are released to the front desk with your property and the remaining time ticks down once a minute while you are online, anywhere in the world. Reaching zero closes the record. Being booked again while on parole revokes it: the time you had left plus a quarter of the original sentence is added to the new one.
Visits, jobs and the commissary
Visits. Anyone can come to the front desk between 08:00 and 22:00 UK time and type /visit <prisoner name>. You see the request in your cell panel; an officer approves or denies it, and if no officer of that agency is online it approves itself after two minutes. A visit moves you to the visiting area and brings the visitor in beside you for up to fifteen minutes. Visitors can request once every thirty minutes.
Prison jobs. Three are on offer at each station:
Job | One unit takes | Time off per unit | Commissary credit per unit |
|---|---|---|---|
Laundry | 45 seconds | 2 minutes | 5 |
Kitchen | 60 seconds | 2 minutes 30 seconds | 6 |
Yard clean | 40 seconds | 1 minute 30 seconds | 4 |
Jobs can take at most a quarter off your sentence; after that the panel says so and further units earn commissary credit only. Stopping, walking away from the job area or being released ends the job.
Commissary. /commissary opens the shop. Credit is not bank money: it is earned inside from jobs or topped up from outside, and spent inside on water (3), coffee (5), a sandwich (6), a chocolate bar (4), chips (4) or cigarettes (10). A visitor during a visit, or anyone at the front desk, can move up to $500 from their bank into your commissary at one credit per dollar. Credit you do not spend stays on your account for the next stay.
Bail
Bail is set at the desk from the charges, and a felony has none. /bail with no argument pays your own from your bank; the plea panel's bail button does the same thing. /bail <prisoner name> lets someone else pay for you at the front desk. Bail can be posted mid-sentence as long as there is more than a minute left, and on payment you are released at once with your property. It is not refunded.
Property, phones and the MDC
Everything seized at the roadside or the desk goes into a property bag: the item list, the cash and any evidence ids. On release the items are re-added and the cash credited. Illegal items are not in the bag; they went to evidence.
A locked phone taken from you stays locked. Officers can only open it with a device warrant approved through the MDC, and then read-only for 24 hours; you are told in your Find My device list when that happens. See The phone.
Your MDC record carries the booking, its charges, the mugshot, notes, any parole, escape or warrant, and the bag. It is what an officer sees the next time they run your name.
Character kills and name changes
A character kill (CK) is the permanent death of a character. You can request one for your own character from the character select screen or with /ck on the current character: a reason of at least ten characters, up to five evidence links and typing the word CK to confirm. An admin confirms or rejects it. Requests that are not decided within an hour expire.
When it is confirmed, the character's vehicles, property, faction membership, jobs, licences, fines and warrants are cleared and the character cannot be played. It stays on your select screen under "Character killed" with a Name change button. Buying a name change unlocks it as a new person: new name, a new phone number, and a locked character creator that must give the character a face at least 35 percent different from the old one before you can play. The old name stays in police records as an alias of a deceased person.
A name change without a CK is also available from /namechange or Settings, Privacy. It costs 300 Project Points, can be done once every 30 days, is refused while you are in custody, and follows the same rules: letters only, two to fifty characters per name, not on the blocked list, not in use. Your phone number is reissued (contacts who saved the old one keep it), bank payees and social profiles are renamed, and historic reports keep the old name so the police can still find you by it.
Tips
Plead quickly. A guilty plea on a misdemeanour is often shorter than the time you would spend arguing it, and the fifteen minute clock does not stop.
Walk laps. Five times faster is the single biggest lever you have; a two month sentence is under ten hours on your feet instead of two days.
Work the kitchen. It gives the most time off per unit and the most credit, and you can do it while chatting with your cellmates.
Ask a friend to visit and top up your commissary; cigarettes make good currency inside.
Do not switch character to "wait it out". It pauses the clock; only playing the jailed character serves the sentence.
If you are on parole, stay out of trouble. A second booking adds a quarter of your original sentence to the new one.
Keep your evidence for a CK request: a forum thread, a clip, a screenshot. Admins decide from the reason and the evidence, not from how much you want it.
Related commands
/cellsEveryoneShow the cell block and who is in each cell
/paroleEveryoneRequest parole, or decide a parole request as an officer
/prisonjobEveryoneOpen the prison job board while serving a sentence
/commissaryEveryoneOpen the prison commissary
/visitEveryoneRequest a visit with a prisoner from the front desk
/bailEveryonePay bail for yourself or for a prisoner at the front desk
/changecharEveryoneReturn to character selection.
/namechangeEveryoneChange your character name for Project Points, or waive the fee as staff
Worked example
Marko Kovac is stopped on Vespucci Boulevard after a fight outside a bar. Officer Hale cuffs him; a third player walking past sees the cuffs. Hale frisks him at the roadside: a knife, $420 in cash and a phone. The knife goes to evidence, the cash and phone into a property bag. Marko is seated in the cruiser and driven to Mission Row, where Hale's HUD reads "At desk".
At the booking desk Hale searches "assault", adds Assault (misdemeanour) with a count of one and a $1,000 fine, attaches the report from an hour earlier, takes a mugshot, picks cell MR-A-2 and submits. The summary read one to three months, fine $1,000, bail $2,000.
Marko is uncuffed inside the cell and the plea panel opens. He has $1,800 in the bank, not enough for bail, so he pleads guilty: one month, 1,440 minutes standing still. The strip reads Remaining 24:00:00, Cell MR-A-2, Guilty plea, 5x while moving. He walks. Twelve minutes later the strip reads 23:00:00 and he has one good behaviour point.
He types /prisonjob and starts in the kitchen: press E at the marker, wait a minute, repeat. Each unit knocks two and a half minutes off and adds six commissary credits. Two hours and twenty-four minutes later, after 144 units, the panel tells him the quarter cap is reached: six hours gone from the sentence and 864 credits on his account. The strip reads a little under fifteen hours. He spends thirty credits on cigarettes and a coffee and goes back to walking laps.
His friend Dana arrives at the front desk at 19:00 UK and types /visit Marko Kovac. No officer of the agency is online, so it approves itself after two minutes. They talk in the visiting area for ten minutes and she tops his commissary up with $200 from her bank.
At the halfway point the strip reads "Parole available". He has four points and no felony. /parole, request. Officer Hale, back on duty, grants it from the MDC with the note "keep out of trouble". Marko is released at the front desk with his phone and $420, his record showing the booking, the mugshot and the parole. The hours he has left tick down over the next few evenings while he works his ordinary job. He does not get booked again, and the record closes on its own.
Related guides
The laws for every charge and its range
How court works for not guilty pleas and court holds
Factions and the MDC for the officer's side
The phone for seized handsets and device warrants