Sedatives would cause physical sleep, and the reason people share bodies in this world is because having your body be asleep will cause your soul to be eaten by insubstantial demons. Sleeping-while-someone-else-pilots-your-body is safe in large part because it cuts off interventions regarding your soul from outside sources—demons, drugs, magic, etc.
Also, this method relies on cooperative criminals, not just cooperative cohabitors-with-criminals. The criminal has an incentive to make being in jail really inconvenient for their cohabitor—by, for instance, not notifying anyone before going to sleep. They’re already in jail, so making their cohabitor mad at them has limited power to make their situation worse, but if the guards wind up having to imprison the cohabitor too to be safe, the cohabitor might work on ways to get out.
Moving one person in with another person is already very magically challenging; this might not be strictly impossible but your average community would not have access to even one person who could do it. Perhaps this would be a good last resort on a national level for anyone with a demonstrated propensity to actually escape, or whose escape would be particularly dreadful.
Sedatives would cause physical sleep, and the reason people share bodies in this world is because having your body be asleep will cause your soul to be eaten by insubstantial demons. Sleeping-while-someone-else-pilots-your-body is safe in large part because it cuts off interventions regarding your soul from outside sources—demons, drugs, magic, etc.
Also, this method relies on cooperative criminals, not just cooperative cohabitors-with-criminals. The criminal has an incentive to make being in jail really inconvenient for their cohabitor—by, for instance, not notifying anyone before going to sleep. They’re already in jail, so making their cohabitor mad at them has limited power to make their situation worse, but if the guards wind up having to imprison the cohabitor too to be safe, the cohabitor might work on ways to get out.
I suppose reallocating cohabitors (say, criminals with criminals) is out of the question?
Moving one person in with another person is already very magically challenging; this might not be strictly impossible but your average community would not have access to even one person who could do it. Perhaps this would be a good last resort on a national level for anyone with a demonstrated propensity to actually escape, or whose escape would be particularly dreadful.