131–140 of 250 posts
Well, they can't ban 1-bit random number generators (e.g. coins) and with a bit of time, you can simulate any of dice used in RPGs.
d4=2 bits+1, d6=3 bits rerolling 0/7, d8=3 bits+1, d10=4 bits rerolling 0/11-15, d12 similar, d20=5 bits rerolling 0/21-31. I suspect that most gamers could pick that up pretty quickly with just a bit of practice.
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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…
Prosecutors and law enforcement stack charges so that it appears to be a 'good deal' to just accept a plea deal rather than risk trial and spending decades behind bars on the slight chance you will be falsely convicted.
IMO this is the single biggest problem with our system.
Plea bargaining and prosecutorial discretion makes a mockery of due process.
Overloaded public defenders and the lack of competent and affordable defense attorneys shifts most of this problem to the lower income brackets.
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>if jails/prisons could ban books... They sorta have. If you want to send a book to an inmate, it must be paperback, must be brand new, and shipped from the retailer. The books cannot have "controversial" material. I've heard of some tech books getting rejected because of "hacking". I know all of this because I have participated in my local Anarchist Black Cross events which is a prison abolition group. Often times,…
The US prison system is largely a loophole to recreate slavery without violating the letter of the 13th Amendment. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/gilmoreprisonslavery...
So if the objective was to re-create slavery, they did a very poor job out of it.
No, our prison system hurts all races: white, black, Asian, native, etc. And sadly -- because of the racism prevalent in US society -- if we want true prison reform, we have to educate people that prison affects all communities, and not just communities of color.
Because there will never be reform as long as around 30% of America's white population believes that prison mainly hurts black people.
Just like it took heroin to finally wake white Americans up to the fact that the drug war is hurting us all, so we must find a way to wake people up to the fact that the prison system is terrible burden to us all. Repeating the false claim that prison is primarily a black problem only prolongs the problem.
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…
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…
There are a lot of people out there who haven't been exposed to drugs who believe that people who take drugs actually deserve to die. Recently in New Zealand several people ended up in hospital after taking dodgy "MDMA", the sheer number of comments on Facebook about how they had it coming, or they deserved it, or how they shouldn't have been admitted into hospital were disgusting.
Regardless of whether they did was right or wrong, these are still human beings, they still have friends and families. Just the other day I walked past a dead heroin addict being wheeled into an ambulance. They had it coming to them, but I didn't feel like they deserved it. Nobody deserves to die on a street corner from an overdose.
It's the same thing with prison. Out of sight, out of mind. If people have never met someone who has gone to prison, then to them it's an abstract concept. They can't imagine the pain or suffering. I've met a couple of people who've served time for drug related charges. Neither of them wanted to commit the crimes they did, but they hit rock bottom. When you're addicted to methamphetamine, you don't exactly think clearly or logically.
But people don't see this. They see the world through the lens of their own reality and their own circumstances. It's the same thing that causes wealthy people to say that poor people just need to get better jobs. They have no concept of the world that these people live in.
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I'm ready to take the hit for asking a very stupid question: why are dice considered contraband? Wouldn't it make more sense to allow inmates access to dice and real spinners? They're human beings with brains. Wouldn't correction officers prefer that they spent their time playing games instead of thinking of ways to escape or "cause trouble"?
The prisons want to ban gambling and currency counters (coins, chips, etc) in order to disrupt the rise of debt-based gang activity. "The house always wins" turns a prison into an organized structure of debtors and owners fairly rapidly, I'd imagine. And you can't fault the far fewer security guards from wanting to avoid a face-off with a unified enemy.