Prisoner Minion

The Prisoner Minion is a monster in Silent Hill: Downpour. They wear a metal contraption on their heads. There are two types of Prisoner Minions: Brawlers and Stabbers. There is a larger, more powerful variant called the Prisoner Juggernaut. One such Juggernaut is shown walking around with a Brawler and a Stabber on "leashes", with meat hooks dug into their backs and being forced to walk around on all fours like dogs, making it very obvious that the Juggernaut is the dominant monster.

Appearance
Prisoner Minions appear to be dark-skinned, tortured humanoids covered in tattoos and lacerations. They all wear ragged brown pants secured with a cord. Their most distinctive feature however, is the series of metal framework digging into their face. These metal strips stretch their faces, forcing open their blank white eyes and keeping their mouths taut into inhumanly huge open-mouthed grins. The straps appear to be bolted to their heads, and blood constantly drips from their mouths, covering their necks and chests. Stabbers are even more deformed, with withered left arms and the flesh of their knife-wielding hand mutated and fused into a tumorous lump.

They display a lot of violent twitching, having quick spasms and convulsions from the waist up constantly. When left idle and unaware of Murphy Pendleton's presence, they appear to grapple with their restraints, trying in vain to remove them.

Character
The Brawler variant is a powerful, straightforward melee fighter. These creatures have no special abilities to speak of, but they do have some very effective strikes. Brawlers tend to attack head on, just jabbing and throwing punches and kicks. The Brawlers also have the ability to ear-slap Murphy, by slapping both of his ears simultaneously to create a disorientating effect. During this state, the player must shake the left analogue stick to shake Murphy out of the paralysing disorientation. Basic melee tactics should allow to defeat a lone Brawler with minimal effort.

The Stabber is a more agile variation of the Prisoner Minion. Stabbers tend to move in and out of melee range, which makes it much more difficult to counterattack after a successful block. Their erratic movements can also make it fairly difficult to land ranged attacks. Try to time Murphy's strikes to hit the Stabber as he moves into range.

Symbolism
The Prisoner Minions represent the frequent fights and riots that prison inmates and prison gangs often participate in while incarcerated, as they are often quite violent struggles that usually end with someone dead.

The Prisoner Minions' eyes are forced open by a metal apparatus extending from the backs of their heads, which also pins their mouth back in a smiling position. This may have connection to controversial administration of intravitreal injections, to drug the more violent subjects into a docile state; which, could be re-enforced by the forceful smile that they portray, symbolizing a state of mind outside of their own control. The smile could also be representative of their initial concept art, which portrayed the prisoners as clowns. The theme of clowns ties in with coulrophobia.

Both variations of the Prisoner Minions may be representative of the elements of Murphy's personality that have changed, become more potent, or arose entirely due to his time in prison. The minions may specifically represent small pieces of his personality attributed to his time as an inmate, such as increased brutality, and willingness to kill.

Trivia

 * Killing or incapacitating 10 Prisoner Minions unlocks the Achievement/Trophy "Lockdown".
 * Like many creatures in the series, his movements include heavy, unnatural twitching.
 * The Prisoner Minion is voiced by Pavel Černohous.
 * The early concepts for the Prisoners are based largely on clowns. The only element of this that survived is the Prisoner's painful-looking grin.