“many who live deserve death. and many who die deserve life. can you give it to them?”

maybe he made a mistake. if he’s in jail, for life, he’s no longer a threat. compassion counts. no reason to make him suffer more now.

Three nerds sitting at a table, quietly playing a card game. The Dean of Students freaked out when he saw pennies on the table (counters) and assumed it was gambling.Then looked at the cards and starting asking about the “violent” images. One of my smart-ass friends pointed out that playing cards have “The Suicide King” and that is was just a strategy game. We spent about ten minutes explaining the rules to him. Kind of cool actually.

The Dean ended up leaving us alone, but he did ask us not to use money as counters. A hardline Christian Brother from “the old school” was more open-minded than these dopes? Silliness.

Don’t cause trouble, obey the rules, and you can play D&D.

Screw up, start fights, make weapons, et al, etc. No D&D for a set time.

This is the same mentality that bans TVs, radios and weights in Federal prisons.

You remove the potential removal of TV, radio, weightlifting gear as punishment.

Behave, don’t fuck up, you get to keep your TV. Fuck up, Oooops! There goes your TV for a few months.

Stupid vindictive bureaucrats!

Say, how exactly “pays” one for a life? Does the murdererd come magically back to live or “comes to peace in heaven”, when the murderer has been abused enough?

If he had a case history of fantasizing about killing people and acting it out which finally resulted in him actually killing somebody, then perhaps it’s for the best.

And I do agree that he’s doing time not to just waste it away on games – and yes, I’m well aware of how bad it is in prison and the horrible shortcomings (to put it mildly) of prison life.

But the fact is that reading a book is just as much “fantasizing” as playing D&D, and they’re not banning anyone from reading fantasy books in prison (or even classics which can carry you away). My guess is that they just don’t understand it at all, are scared of it, or think it’s “just another game”.

I think in general that some prisoners should be allowed to play D&D. Heck, maybe it’ll “nerd them up” to become a bit better citizens with more empathy towards others. But I wouldn’t go out defending this guy without knowing more. He could be somebody I’d rather see dropped down a well for what he did (though I’m not advocating his death or anything…just a figure of speech).

I think a blanket ban is stupid though. Like I said: some people might actually benefit from it a bit. You never know. And I’d rather see gangs of D&D players in prison than the gangs currently in vogue that you usually get behind bars.

I do not see how abusing these people should help in the slightest. Those who could be rehabilitated would certainly not profit from abuse. And those who can’t and need to be imprisoned for live or at least decades just get reaffirmed in their belief that might makes right.

The first is whether prisoners should be punished by depriving them of things such as books, games, TV, etc.

The second is that you have an officious bureaucrat leveling a lot of charges at D&D that don’t hold up to scrutiny.

I am not overly concerned with the first here, but every time we let administrative prigs like these prison officials use weasel words as justification for their actions, we move further and further away from a society with real accountability.

Want to punish by taking something away? Say so. The court explicitly agreed with the notion of deprivation punishments of that type.

People who hide behind vague, unsupported notions of “inappropriateness” as justification for their agendas are among the worst sort of person.

“Singer was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 after being found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide in the killing of his sister’s boyfriend. The man was bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer.”

It’s not a good reason to me, but mileage varies.

Your 3rd example – he protects her from getting beating up, accidentally killing the man – would probably lead to dropped charges over here (Germany), if evidence corroborating his and his sister’s story exists.

Killing in self-defense is not a crime where I live, even if some Bavarian judges think differently.

Why does one institution have a monopoly on punishing people on crimes?

Punishment doesn’t prevent crimes. It doesn’t make the victim whole. It creates all sorts of perverse incentives, ie the drug war. It just grinds up lives, wastes money, and in a variety of ways creates more criminals.

I mean, people stand around and laugh about prison rape. Hahahah..don’t drop the soap! I mean..RAPE. Institutionalized RAPE. YEARS AND YEARS OF DAILY VIOLENT GANG RAPE IS OUR SOCIETY’S ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF CRIME.

Our whole society is based on structures o violence and coercion, and some warden is worry about imaginary dwarves with battle axes?

Why do we give an exclusive monopoly on “punishment” to one group of people? The criminal justice system isn’t really interested in protecting people, isn’t really interested in providing restitution for crimes…but is very interested in punishing, punishing, punishing.

There’s no moral basis for it. It’s sick, wrong, unproductive, non-rehabilitative, expensive, and harmful.

A sane criminal justice system would be based on rehabilitation, making the victim whole, and expelling the unrepentant from society and economic life until they come around.

False divide? On its basest level, doesn’t choosing to not use murder to solve ones problems = better person? What am I missing here?

“..industrial prison complex’s scope of control in all of our lives”

As far as I know, the industrial prison “complex” scope of control doesn’t effect my life in any way.

Strike that. It does control me!

I know I don’t want to go to prison.

Kill the line off. Make it a genetic decision. How many murderers have “served their time”, rejoined society, fathered children and passed on their genetic and/or psychological penchant for murder to another generation? Countless.

Evidence?

I beg of you to actually consult facts before voting on ill-considered policy.

On the other, these guys are sitting quietly, serving their time and not dealing drugs, shanking each other or any of the other wonderful things that are associated with life in the Big House with probably the most destructive thing being the shouting of NATURAL 20!

Weird. I never thought this would make me feel odd.

The late Gary Gygax pointed out when religious nutbags were claiming a connection with violence that overall if such “Statistics” could be taken at face value, the number of players compared to acts of violence was low. By statistics, it lowers the chance of violence. So the nutbags went back to the “Chick Tract” argument and quoting outright false statistics as if they’d never been countered.

But, I think the warden was on a “Power Trip” and frankly people like that care nothing for the truth. Eventually, most of these people from the murderers to the child molesters will get out. Simply put, our nation is on a downward spiral and there’s fierce NIMBY to everything, so they’ll push some of them out. Years ago, the Drug war caused an up swing in molestations that were committed by people who’d gotten “1 year to life” but then the parole board found 2 “Mandatory Minimums” and 1 “Parole option” and ran out of bank robbers and mob bosses…

Overall, he should allow such a game. Keeps them quiet, keeps them socializing. Keeps them relatively obedient as he could take them away for bad behavior.

What exactly is he paying? Time? Are you suggesting by any reasonable or measurable level that time can be, or even remotely fix, the murder of someone? He’s a menace to society and he’s locked away forever with a bunch of people who did similar things, this is fucking free period dude. I’d rather him play DnD than learn how to build bombs (though I’m sure the prison bans both). I think if we look at the narrow view of this being only some kind of punishment, and not something that’s supposed to help reintegrate them into the society after their “debt” has been paid, we forget that while this person did commit murder it’s possible for them to be a functioning person of society again. Unless you have no morals, than we can just kill him.

“Kill the line off. Make it a genetic decision. How many murderers have “served their time”, rejoined society, fathered children and passed on their genetic and/or psychological penchant for murder to another generation? Countless.

Please notice I said execution after all legal options are exhausted. I do not advocate the execution of innocent people. But I am a pragmatist, and I understand that justice cannot be perfect.”

Okay, so what about the children and sibilings of murderers? Do they get just sterilized or do we off ‘em too, just to make sure?

Now if he had murdered someone while robbing them, or maybe not even murder but rape, then I’d say put the bastard in a blank white room with nothing but his own mind.

I mean, what the hell is wrong with all of these other prisons? If this one could have dealt with all of those serious correctional institution issues SIX years ago, why can’t the other prisons fix theirs?

He made awful decisions, and should be taken out of society for having made them. Why delight in that?

As a YA librarian I’ve run role-playing campaigns with teenagers and seen them learn to work together, think creatively and use their imaginations to entertain each other.

Even the most vile of villains should not be deprived of the right to imagine. Doing so dimishes us as his jailers and speaks to our need for revenge, not justice.