Hey All, there have been some substantial changes in Azkaban!!!
1. NO MORE ESCAPES!! Characters who are sent there will no longer be permitted to escape from the prison in order to get back into play. There are a couple of options, and you will have to use one of those from here on out. Azkaban needs to go back to being the fearsome place for all of the wizarding world that it was instead of some comedic satire of what it was intended to be.
2. You want out? Fine. I don't object to that. However, it has to be through legitimate means. Here are the options.
a. parole--when it is decided that perhaps your character should be released to the wizarding public, your character will go back and appear before the Wizengamot, pose their case for release before the court, and then a parole program will be designed. The risk to this becomes that if your character re-offends, he or she risks being sent back to prison--swiftly.
b. shorter sentences--we will not always be sentencing for life now, and it is possible that your charactter might be able to serve the sentence out before being released, and thereby starting life with a clean slate, without risk of going back to prison except by a new offense.
c. work release programs--the ministry will be instituting work release programs so that inmates maybe sent to various parts of wizarding England on a work release program. Offenses during work release will result in a return to Azkaban.
d. extreme health needs--when a character develops a serious health need, they will be transferred to St. Mungos for treatment.
e. Azkaban now has an IC warden. Rob Dent has been hired to be in charge of the facility. Yes he was an inmate, but he has been pardoned and works for the ministry now. So, really, that will not work in your character's favor at all if he/she finds themselves there. Think about it--he's already been there, done that. He knows the tricks of the inmates already.
In addition, more dementors have been hired, security has been massively tightened, and all inmates will be reviewed to see if they are appropriate for Azkaban's new rehabilitative programming. More about that later. But it should prove to provide some very interesting personal plotting.
Robert Lupin
Minister of Magic
by 
