How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by meschi » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 11:53 AM UTC

Thrwr11 wrote: post #180

toomanybeersies wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to be incredibly judgemental and lacking in compassion for people in different circumstances. 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, o…

Addicts are people and deserve help, sure. Most of the hate towards them comes from their bad behavior and how that affects other people. Deathwishes are just one way to cope with the inability to actually do anything about, say, noisy or violent drug addicts or criminals who don't care about other people.

I haven't seen one "noisy violent drug addict" in my life. I am not saying they don't exist, but the vast majority of drug users or even addicts are not discernible as such. Anyway, that is my European perspective.

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

#192

Post by jernfrost » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 12:02 PM UTC

Comming from Norway where we have a very different attitude towards prisoners, I never cease to being amazed at the sheer pettiness towards prisoners in the US. Are they not supposed to have an ounce of enjoyment in life? A dice is contraband!!! Seriously!!

Is the point of prison to be miserable every single day? How is hating yourself, your life and everything every day supposed to make somebody a better person?

It often feels like the US is mentally speaking where we were 100 years ago in Norway. It is just bizarre how such a modern innovative country is so backwards with respect to how people are treated. Norway legislated national maternity leave over 100 years ago. It still doesn't exist in the US.

Somehow it seems like the US is regressing. Many of the progressive ideas we use came from the US originally. Liberal American professors have spread ideas which have benefited Nordic countries a lot, such as Harvey Milkman which solved the drug and subsistence abuse in Iceland.

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

#193

Post by cm2187 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 12:13 PM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #139

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…

People seem to be incredibly judgemental and lacking in compassion for people in different circumstances. 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, o…

I think the lack of sympathy for addicts doesn't come from the assumption that they can just stop being addicts or have a rational behavior once they became addicts, but from the thinking that they became addicted of their own free will when they started taking hard drugs. It's not like the dangers and consequences of drug addiction aren't widely known. Actually I can only think of a handful of Hollywood movies where hard drug consumption isn't associated with becoming a junky. People take bad decisions, it's a free world, let them live, but they own the consequences down the line.

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

#194

Post by songshu » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 12:29 PM UTC

tuxxy wrote: post #94

Unbeliever69 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. jails/prisons are designed specifically to make the inmate's life as miserable as they are allowed to by law. Trust me, if jails/prisons could ban books or commissary, they would. What you describe is what the Swedish prison system is all about. https://mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-pris... . This is a system designed to make people not only pay for their crimes but to help them rehabilitate an…

>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,…

In addition to the general prohibitions, Texas have an explicit list of banned books. Reproductions of it have appeared in the media but there is no way of knowing the current up to date list. And many states claim that book deliveries are a source of contraband and impose restrictions on them (max 2 books at a time etc)

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

#195

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 12:39 PM UTC

stryk wrote: post #156

NeonVice wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did they carve with?

I can only speak for what I saw done first-hand. Some guys used their own shanks/shivs/whatever you want to call it, basically any old piece of metal. This was obviously done in their cells on their own. Much more frequently [and out in the open] though was guys using the plastic butter "knives" that came in the dinner trays (think KFC, individually wrapped sets of 1 plastic spork, 1 wetnap, and 1 plastic butter knif…

you had bics? like these?

http://webcuriosita.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/penna-bic....

at school we used those as dices directly, notches on each of their six sides, making them roll in a bunch was random enough.

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

#196

Post by baud147258 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #184

rb666 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a thing in the USA and other 2nd-world countries. In most European countries this is very different.

Nordic countries maybe, French, British, German not to mention former Commie block countries prisons aren't what you think...

French prisons have currently a big problem of a number of inmates way above the stated capacity, radicalisation issues and a lack of financing. The problem were grave enough that the guards did a long strike last year, blocking the access to the prisons.

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

#197

Post by __s » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

EggsOnToast wrote: post #70

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…

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…

If we afren't looking to rehabilitate then we should focus on reducing the cost of capital punishment & begin executing inmates

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

#198

Post by jnbiche » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

aseipp wrote: post #153

jnbiche wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite black Americans being incarcerated at greater rates than white Americans, there are far more white Americans incarcerated than there are black Americans. 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…

OP never said anything about race or incarceration statistics -- he just said the prison system is a mechanism to recreate slavery. To Americans, the word "slave" has a very, very particular meaning -- revolving around the nature and history of black people in our country. But it should not, and can not , not be divorced from the abstract concept of what slavery is . Slavery is about power, and slaves come in many fo…

> OP never said anything about race or incarceration statistics -- he just said the prison system is a mechanism to recreate slavery.

He used the term "recreate slavery", which in this context would mean to re-establish the chattel slavery of people of African ancestry that existed previously in US. And the article he referenced very specifically discussed African-American slavery. So that's what I responded to.

As an aside, Americans of Scotch-Irish [1] ancestry (which includes my own background) are a very vengeful people. This culture, which also has some positive traits (bravery, loyalty, etc), had a huge impact on the general culture United States and its attitudes toward criminal justice.

But if you've never been around rural people of Scotch-Irish ancestry, you'd probably find their beliefs on justice fairly shocking. These are the people who often believe that if someone who goes to prison for a relatively minor, non-violent offense, and is raped in prison -- even if they're a family member! -- that this person "had it coming" or "deserved it". Prison is for suffering, not redemption.

Ironically, these same people are frequently very overt Christians, often evangelicals (they converted en masse from Calvinism--typically Presbyterianism--to Baptist during the great awakenings of the 19th century). But they're definitely Old Testament Christians, with not much use for most of the New Testament (except perhaps Revelations).

Anyway, combine that kind of culture with some of the other factors you describe, and you end up with the prison culture we have today in the United States.

1. And no, for us it's not "Scots-Irish". "Scotch-Irish" was in common usage when they immigrated to the US in the 18th century, and that's what's been passed down over the years (and it's how my grandparents described our ancestry, which after careful genealogical study was indeed Ulster Scots with a bit of German thrown in): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans

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

#199

Post by geocar » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

__s wrote: post #197

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…

If we afren't looking to rehabilitate then we should focus on reducing the cost of capital punishment & begin executing inmates

The reason we don't execute inmates isn't because Americans want rehabilitation, but because they recognise that the Law isn't infallible, and sometimes Innocent people go to jail, and to that end, you can't really have take-backs for an execution.

But you're right about cost reduction. I think it costs somewhere around $40k per year to incarcerate an inmate, so how about we just pay them? We can literally put them in a flatshare, feed them and water them, and it'll still be cheaper than putting them in jail.

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

#200

Post by VyseofArcadia » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

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.

I would be in support of their treatment if it actually reduced recidivism, but punitive measures only work up to a certain point. Then recidivism starts going back up. Of course it also doesn't help how poorly we treat ex-prisoners once they've paid their debt to society.

We need to dump our gut feelings on the subject of incarceration and craft policy based on evidence and effectiveness instead.