Basic Trope: A criminal is sent to prison, but still enjoys several privileges and comforts that most other prisoners don't have.
- Straight: Danny DeVillione, a criminal mastermind, is finally caught and sent to jail. However, his cell is made surprisingly comfortable, with better food, furniture and other perks that the regular prisoners don't enjoy.
- Exaggerated:
- Danny's private cell looks like it'd fit right in at a mansion, boasting only the finest trappings available.
- The so-called 'Hellhole Prison' has better amenities that even the 'seven-star' hotels in Dubai. Being sentenced to serve time there is seen as a highly glorified vacation, and the ultimate goal of many a criminal mastermind.
- Downplayed: Danny gets a private cell, and the guards overlook small luxuries such as his Black Market hotplate and coffee pot.
- Justified:
- Danny secured his special accommodations through bribes and "special favors".
- Danny is in a minimum-security prison and he's a model prisoner — maybe he won't have "a Hilton", but as long as he makes clear he will obey the rules, the guards will not go crazy with the few extra comforts he borrows.
- Danny is placed under house arrest, meaning he serves out his sentence in his own, opulent home.
- The Bread and Circuses approach is used to keep prisoners too comfortable and lazy to commit violent crimes.
- Danny is a member of the gentry and is accorded more luxuries and privileges as a result of his rank than common prisoners are afforded.
- The prison is designed for rehabilitation, not punishment. It's one of the carrots put in place to foment Danny to think about what he did and how to turn his life around, not a stick to teach him how to escalate in order to survive now that he's "tainted" by his criminal record.
- Danny is serving as an informant.
- Inverted:
- The conditions of Danny's cell are far worse than those foisted on the regular prisoners.
- Hellhole Prison, in which the guards may or may not be evil.
- Danny is confined to his mansion for his "protection" with specially handpicked guards and special GPS tracking to make sure he does not step out of line. Despite living the life of luxury, Danny is deep down quite powerless.
- Subverted:
- When officers Alice and Bob visit to check on Danny, they see that he isn't treated any better or worse than the other criminals.
- Danny's cell is loaded with silver trim. But he is a werewolf making it torturous instead of luxurious.
- Danny is not a criminal, just someone who needs to stay in a protected environment.
- The cell is luxurious but the prison system is absurdly abusive and Danny spends every night staining the silk sheets with blood.
- Double Subverted:
- ...However, after they leave, Danny returns to his luxury cell; its existence is being kept quiet to try and avoid scandal.
- ...Is what the authorities claim about the Gilded Cage.
- Danny is such a Straw Loser that he wonders (half-serious) what kind of crime he needs to commit to spend a couple more months in the cell.
- The silver-lined cell is still a lot more comfy than the actual anti-werewolf procedures. Danny just needs to be very careful where he sits and stay away from any windows during full moon.
- Danny spends a lot of cash getting rid of the psycho guards and replacing them with loyal guards. In the end, he is penniless, but has a real nice place to stay until he can figure out how to bounce back.
- Parodied:
- When Danny is first escorted into prison, he is given his pick of several dozen palatial cells, taken to increasingly ridiculous levels. The scene plays like he's picking a hotel room, down to an obsequious bellboy.
- The prison is better than a seven-star hotel in Dubai, but all of the prisoners are (bunch of people the author hates, such as white-collar yuppies) that went to (college the author hates, possibly in the Ivy League) and are all obsessed with (sport the author hates; possibly soccer), so Danny acts like he had been shoved in the darkest Hellhole Prison in the world.
- Danny is in a prison with awful living conditions, but treats it as luxurious because his standard of living as a homeless man before getting locked up was even lower.
- Zig-Zagged: After being arrested, Danny tries to get special treatment, but is refused ... at first. After greasing enough palms, he's able to get everything he wants and live comfortably. The media get wind of this and start running exposés, decrying the prison for using state taxes to coddle criminals; in response, Danny's privileges are revoked, and he fights to have them reinstated on his own dime.
- Averted: Danny's cell is just like everyone else's.
- Enforced: The writers want to show just how powerful Danny was and still is, despite his incarceration, but don't want to use a Cardboard Prison. Not just yet, anyway.
- Lampshaded: "This is a prison? ...Excuse me, I think there's a bank that needs robbing."
- Invoked: Alice and Bob deliberately give Danny a nice prison so that he is reluctant to escape.
- Exploited: Alice and Bob use Danny as an example of why this prison system needs reforms.
- Defied:
- The warden laughs his ass off and has Danny thrown into solitary confinement just for presuming to dictate terms to him.
- A vigilante, knowing that this will likely be the result if Danny DeVillione is sent to prison, simply kills him when he has the chance.
- Discussed: The director of prisons talks about an upcoming trial run of nice cells and how they're going to start filling them with minor offenders, who pose less risk of recidivism and will be more motivated to abide by the law afterwards.
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Danny's comfortable cell makes him a target of envy and greed among his fellow prisoners; he has to keep pulling strings and taxing his connections in order to avoid getting killed by the other inmates.
- Since most people in society know that their prisons aren't so bad after all, most of them, especially the poor, quickly take advantage of it and crime rates rise to record levels, causing civil unrest and great levels of fear to grow within society. The civilian population's trust in the judicial system drops dead and most of them have begun to arm themselves before anytime they walk out of the door.
- Reconstructed:
- Danny's connections keep him in comfort/protect him nonetheless, because if anything ever happens to him, someone else on the outside will make them pay dearly for it.
- Despite the benefits, being in isolation and with no true freedom is still incredibly debilitating, and thus, people still want to stay out of prison.
- The law system becomes tougher as a result, with the luxurious prisons are for those who "deserve" it (read: minor crimes or criminals who make clear wish to reform and never return) and the ones who don't (recidivists, murderers, et al.) get the Hellhole Prison and/or death row within said hellhole prison.
- Like in Norway, the purpose of the use of comfort in the prison setting is for the sake of rehabilitation, to prepare the inmates into a comfortable and nonviolent life once they're free. Compare this to punishment-based incarceration where the immense use of torture more often than not drives prisoners insane.
- Played for Laughs: Danny's special accommodations is pretty much his ability to buy as much luxury goods from the local jail store as he wishes; he doesn't have get any luxury from his previous life as a criminal. So while the other inmates only get their three meals, Danny can have his three meals and an ice cream sundae courtesy of the store.
- Played for Drama: Danny's special accommodations reveal the fundamental injustice in the system, and he actually runs his criminal empire better from prison than he did outside since the protagonists believe him to be safely imprisoned.
- Played for Horror: Danny is an unstoppable psychopath and his prison cell is luxurious because it's his home, the place where he comes to sit back and unwind after a stressful day of slaughter, and nobody touches his home because anybody who does tends to live just long enough to regret it.
- Implied:
- Danny doesn't seem very scared of going to prison, nor very relieved upon leaving prison.
- Danny is shown to be relaxed and wistful whenever vaguely talking about his time in prison.
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