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How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

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Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#121

Post by partomniscient »

sevensor wrote: post #68
csours wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As illustrated in the well known documentary "Mazes and Monsters" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcL-fQNPfQ

There's a memorable chick tract on the same theme as well.

The girl in it casts the Mind Bondage spell on her Dad to make him buy $200 worth of D&D stuff.

I was rather incredulous at the time because

a) they thought it was the case that spells in D&D work in our reality

and

b) there didn't appear to be a Mind Bondage spell.....unless perhaps they meant Charm Person?

What's their take on Stranger Things?

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#122

Post by tdeck »

John23832 wrote: post #11
protonimitate wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as pastimes go it seems pretty innocent, but I guess one could argue that because jail is supposed to be punishment time passing actives aren't a priority (not saying I do or do not agree with that stance).

That’s probably the problem. Jail/prison should primarily be for reform, not pusnishment. If I punish without helping you change, I’m only telling you to not get caught next time.

The Reveal podcast did an excellent bit where an undercover reporter worked as a prison guard: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.revealnews.org/episodes/the...

One of the things that really struck me is that when the prison stopped offering programs to occupy the inmates time, they tended to fill it themselves. By getting into fights. So aside from the punishment aspect, there seems to be real value to the system to have pastimes that keep a lid on things, be they work programs, classes, or a cheap board game.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#123

Post by edanm »

pmarreck wrote: post #74
EggsOnToast wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just giving anecdata here so I'm curious to see if you agree with me. Having known two people that went to prison, my opinion on the system is that I think people usually go to prison for the legally correct reason. That being said, a lot of people I meet seem to associate going to prison with deserving to live in a hellhole. No one considers the social exclusion itself a hellhole as evidenced by the ubiquitousne…

> I think people usually go to prison for the legally correct reason Or not, if most of the incriminating information was eyewitness testimony, the #1 cause of wrongful convictions: https://www.innocenceproject.org/ MY opinion of the US criminal justice system is that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation is almost definitely not being followed, with the bias far into the false-positive conviction…

> Come to think of it, why is the criminal justice system not "tested"? In other words, set up a mock situation where you know in advance who is innocent and who is not (because it's a setup), and run a mock trial by all the rules using actual jurors, and compare the outcome of the trial to the actual innocence or guilt of the actor?

Probably for the same reason most things are or aren't done - some form of status-quo bias. I mean, someone has to think of the idea, push it, administer it, etc. It's a lot of work. And no one really has an incentive to do that work right now.

Btw, your statement isn't really accurate: >> I think people usually go to prison for the legally correct reason >Or not, if most of the incriminating information was eyewitness testimony, the #1 cause of wrongful convictions:

The fact that eyewitness testimony is the #1 cause of wrongful convictions doesn't tell us anything about the rate at which wrong convictions occur. It's possible for eyewitness testimony to be the #1 cause of wrongful convictions, but for there to be only e.g. 3 wrong convictions a year out of 100k trials. Which would probably be pretty "acceptable".

(I say this because it sounded like you were making the common probability mistake of flipping two things: knowledge of how often a wrongful conviction is caused by eyewitness testimony, and knowledge of how often eyewitness testimony causes a wrongful conviction. Knowing the former doesn't mean we know the latter. Not sure if you're actually claiming this, but wanted to clarify what it sounded like to me).

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#124

Post by sergiotapia »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #53

For a semester, I taught in a state prison for a prisoner educational program. Every time I went in, I was struck by how punitively petty so many of the rules and corrections officers were. The environment is carefully crafted to suck out all joy and hope from the inmates. Azkaban with its dementor guards is a pretty good illustration of an American prison. Guards are as likely to confiscate gaming materials (and pun…

They're in jail - not a vacation.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#125

Post by edanm »

vkou wrote: post #115
tachyoff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 is absolutely important. You can't just take valuable time and money from people to do "testing" that, in my opinion, wouldn't tell you anything anyway. It's insulting to all of the professionals involved, especially when they have a backlog of /real/ cases to get to. But let's entertain the idea and say that you get the trial to happen, and your innocent person was found guilty, or vice versa. What do you do with…

> 1. That costs time and money. False convictions have a gargantuan cost in time, money, and human suffering. Justice is incredibly important. We need to get it right.

I think almost everyone agrees with your generic statement above. I'm not sure this means anyone will agree on where the actual line is.

(Not that I think that money is the reason this doesn't get done).

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#126

Post by edanm »

edanm wrote: post #123
pmarreck wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think people usually go to prison for the legally correct reason Or not, if most of the incriminating information was eyewitness testimony, the #1 cause of wrongful convictions: https://www.innocenceproject.org/ MY opinion of the US criminal justice system is that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation is almost definitely not being followed, with the bias far into the false-positive conviction…

> Come to think of it, why is the criminal justice system not "tested"? In other words, set up a mock situation where you know in advance who is innocent and who is not (because it's a setup), and run a mock trial by all the rules using actual jurors, and compare the outcome of the trial to the actual innocence or guilt of the actor? Probably for the same reason most things are or aren't done - some form of status-qu…

Also, just to answer your actual hypothetical of "testing" the criminal justice system:

I'm not sure how you would test it. You can run a "mock" trial, although I'm not sure it's so easy - to be realistic, I think you need to create a scenario which can plausibly go in either direction (innocent or guilty). But what would that tell you? I mean, "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a pretty high standard and all, but if you make it seem pretty clear that someone is guilty when they're "really" innocent, that doesn't mean much, because this is fiction - you made up a tricky case, and people got it wrong. So what? The question is how often does real life cause a tricky scenario to manifest.

You can go the other way and set up a situation that's pretty clear, but I'm not sure that will be very insightful.

That's not to say we can't think of some way to test the system which does work - I'm sure smarter and more knowledgeable people than me can think of something. But that brings us to problem number 2 - now what? Let's say people got it wrong. What do you do? It's not like you can just change the way trials work - you need laws for that.

The most you can reasonably do is use trial tests as a basis for potentially changing the law, but that's before any politics gets involved. Realistically, I'm not sure you can do much more than gets done now - once in a while an article gets written about a specific bad practice, it causes a public stir, and the law maybe gets changed. I'm not sure systematizing any of the testing steps really changes anything else in this picture.

And we might as well ask about easier things, why don't we test them. I.e. why not test economic policies by building "test cities" which have different economic policies, and seeing which ones work? The States kind-of does this with different laws in different States. So there is kind of a natural experiment of the effect of different laws on economics, on justice, etc. This does affect some things, but I'm not sure the effect is very large (but then again, I'm not an American, so I'm not that up to date on the politics there. It's certainly an idea that a lot of lip-service is paid to, but maybe it's more than that).

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#127

Post by Jeff_Brown »

labster wrote: post #23
John23832 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s probably the problem. Jail/prison should primarily be for reform, not pusnishment. If I punish without helping you change, I’m only telling you to not get caught next time.

But how will the corporate prisons earn future profits if prisoners reform in jail?

Prison and wealth inequality are similarly socially inefficient. Human capital is our most valuable resource, and we systematically waste it by depriving people of the opportunity to improve themselves.

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#128

Post by danieltillett »

cr0sh wrote: post #10
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #3

Disappointing to hear that some prisons are cracking down on D&D, like the Idaho State Correctional Instutition whose rules are quoted ITA. It seems like a productive outlet to me. Locking someone up for a few years with nothing interesting to do sounds like a good way to make someone come out the other end worse than they were before.

> Locking someone up for a few years with nothing interesting to do sounds like a good way to make someone come out the other end worse than they were before. Given the (growing) number of private, for-profit prisons - that would be seen as a feature, not a bug. Because if they leave worse off, they'll likely be returning - thus generating a steady income stream courtesy of taxpayers. Cynical, yes - but likely true.

Private prisons with the right incentives would be the way to go. If instead of only being paid for each prisoner they housed they were paid for each prisoner that did not come back then they would be a lot more interested in rehabilitation and reform. Private prisons would do things like set up job programs for prisoners and lobby for law changes that made it hard to send ex-prisonsers back to jail for trivial infractions.

Private systems in general are more responsive to incentives than public systems and less likely to be captured by vested interests (e.g. prison guard unions). If used wisely (i.e. with appropriate incentives) they can be a huge force for good.

Of course the actual incentives used are terrible so end result is an amplification of all the bad aspects of the prison system :(

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#129

Post by mark_edward »

sergiotapia wrote: post #124
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #53

For a semester, I taught in a state prison for a prisoner educational program. Every time I went in, I was struck by how punitively petty so many of the rules and corrections officers were. The environment is carefully crafted to suck out all joy and hope from the inmates. Azkaban with its dementor guards is a pretty good illustration of an American prison. Guards are as likely to confiscate gaming materials (and pun…

They're in jail - not a vacation.

Do you think petty cruelty towards prisoners makes society safer and reduces recidivism?

Re: How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband

#130

Post by SeanBoocock »

sergiotapia wrote: post #124
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #53

For a semester, I taught in a state prison for a prisoner educational program. Every time I went in, I was struck by how punitively petty so many of the rules and corrections officers were. The environment is carefully crafted to suck out all joy and hope from the inmates. Azkaban with its dementor guards is a pretty good illustration of an American prison. Guards are as likely to confiscate gaming materials (and pun…

They're in jail - not a vacation.

Sure and restricting prisoners' freedom is distinction enough such that no one would confuse the two. If prison is meant to have a correctional role, to rehabilitate people and prepare them to reenter society successfully, it needs to be more than a building to house people organized around capricious rules that infantilize the population.
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