From what the doctor said to Cassian & Kino this may have been the first time they recycled a prisoner. In other words, we’re seeing another impact of the Emperor’s new law, PORD. Cassian got a six-year sentence rather than six months; the existing prisoners had their sentences doubled; & now no-one is really released.
The mistake seems to be that they put this prisoner back inside the same (part of) the prison where he was recognised. We do see six other landing platforms besides the one Cassian is brought to. Though it’s unclear if they are connected.
Communication between the levels is clearly limited as the scenes with the sign language conversations between levels show.
Chandrila is beginning to seem like the planet where all the wealthy and ignorant people are from.
I think this is just because the only Chandrilans we’ve met are the ones who would travel or move to Coruscant. Tay made it pretty clear that Mon’s way of life on Coruscant is much fancier than the usual Chandrilan lifestyle. I’m hoping we actually get to see Chandrila sometime, and maybe some of its more normal denizens, but the apparent introduction of a Chandrilan mob boss does not achieve that goal.
What exactly do we think happened with Level 2? Did a guy think he was getting released from Level 4, but really he was just reassigned to Level 2, and when the Level 2 prisoners realized the truth, they rioted? Or was he supposed to be released but they made a bureaucratic error? Or…something else? The fact that frying an entire level took so much power that it knocked out power elsewhere in the prison temporarily has interesting implications for the potential of a full-scale riot. On the other hand, the prison does not seem all that difficult to completely flood if commanding officers on the highest level deem it necessary.