
Dungeons & Dragons ruled a threat to prison security - wybo
http://abovethelaw.com/2010/01/seventh-circuit-rules-dungeons-dragons-a-threat-to-prison-security/
======
jarrett
The court applied the Turner test, which is very similar to the rational basis
test: the plaintiff was burdened with showing that the threat of gang
formation was "so remote as to render the policy arbitrary or irrational."

This may strike some as odd, given that 1st Amendment cases typically use
strict scrutiny, not rational basis. But, here's the catch: it doesn't apply
in prison! In prison, your 1st amendment rights are more limited, and
something akin to the rational basis test does indeed apply. To quote the
court:

"In Turner, the Supreme Court determined that prison regulations that restrict
inmates' constitutional rights are nevertheless valid if they are reasonably
related to legitimate penological interests."

So, despite the apparent silliness of banning D&D, it seems the prison was
within its rights to do so. The prison system may, at its discretion, inflict
all kinds of petty punishments upon prisoners. If you're sent to prison, your
rights are sharply curtailed. That's what the court decided in Turner, so
that's the way it is.

Whether or not this is good policy is, of course, open to debate. It depends
on what balance you want to strike between the punitive/rehabilitative
purposes of prison. I'm of the opinion that criminal justice ought to be
primarily aimed at reducing recidivism, but then society at large doesn't
really agree with me.

Here's the full decision:

<http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1498113.html>

------
stcredzero
This makes me think of Weird Al's "White and Nerdy"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qYF9DZPdw>

I attended a military academy, which mildly resembled prison in a few
respects. We weren't allowed out of the dorms after 7pm, and an instructor
would make sure we were all in bed (checking off our names on a checklist) and
turn the light out in our rooms for us. Then he'd stay there and make sure we
didn't leave our rooms until just before Reveille.

The jocks and bad atitude cases would sometimes dress up as commandos in all-
black outfits and go on "missions" to sneak off have trysts with girlfriends
or pull pranks (like shining the breasts of one female statue on campus.)
They'd often get caught, which was bad because it was technically a dismissal
offense. Me, I was part of a group that snuck around after lights out to
gather and play D&D. Actually, we didn't sneak. We just put on dress uniform,
and the security guards assumed we were Officer of the Day.

No, I did not have a girlfriend in High School.

------
tzs
The arguments the gang "expert" made about similarities between D&D player
organization and gang organization would apply equally well to many organized
religions, such as Catholicism. I wonder if a prison could get away with
banning that?

~~~
burgerbrain
Leads to the question: if Singer and his fellow players just got a little more
"serious" about playing DnD, to the point where they could argue it
constituted a religion, would they then be allowed to play?

~~~
tomjen3
Unlikely, courts tend to take a dim view on religions that aren't several
hundreds if not thousands of years old.

It is a legal hack to prevent situations like the one you described.

~~~
endtime
Doesn't Scientology have the status of an accepted religion in the US?

~~~
w1ntermute
They got an exception because of the all the rich/famous people they have.

~~~
electromagnetic
So the defining characteristic of a religious entity is how much that entity
can extort from its followers, and because Scientology extorts from the rich
rather than the poor they attained this status faster.

Now where's my chapel in the Apple Store? I suppose the Genius Bar may
constitute, but I'm smarter than those people so it doesn't provide me any
solace.

~~~
w1ntermute
> So the defining characteristic of a religious entity is how much that entity
> can extort from its followers, and because Scientology extorts from the rich
> rather than the poor they attained this status faster.

Wrong, the definining characteristic of a governmentally recognized religious
entity is a religious entity that has enough wealth to successfully lobby the
government into recognizing it.

> Now where's my chapel in the Apple Store? I suppose the Genius Bar may
> constitute, but I'm smarter than those people so it doesn't provide me any
> solace.

Believe it or not, the vast majority of Apple users don't consider Apple to be
a religious entity or follow its every move with anything approaching
religious fervor. They're just riding the technology pop culture wave.

------
kemayo
I do wish that US prisons would decide whether they're in the business of
punishment or rehabilitation. You see a lot of talk about rehabilitation, of
course, but so much of what goes on in there seems to have no purpose but to
punish people. (e.g. broad societal tolerance of prison-rape, or petty
tyrannies such as those described in the article)

I'd prefer that they came down on the side of rehabilitation, of course... but
I'd settle for /honesty/ about their goals.

~~~
phlux
>I do wish that US prisons would decide whether they're in the business...

They have decided. They are in the business of _BUSINESS_ \-- it is a
profitable system where they harvest their crop through a corrupt system of
laws - even outright bribing judges to send them new meat (like the case with
the juvenile judges back east -- <http://boingboing.net/2009/02/02/judges-
jailed-for-ta.html>)

Honesty about their goals == PROFIT

~~~
amurmann
Rehabilitation is actually bad for business, since rehabilitated inmates won't
be returning "customers". It's just so wrong that prisons are run by private
companies...

------
pjscott
What happened to the idea that D&D led to Satanism and suicide? This was a big
deal back in the 1980s. You never hear about it anymore, and yet I haven't
heard any of the old scaremongers actually admitting that they were wrong.
Ditto for Satanic ritual abuse, which used to scare people out of their wits.

~~~
philwelch
It's called a "moral panic", and they happen all the time. There have been
moral panics about rock music, comic books, teenage sex parties, fictitious
drugs, and video games.

~~~
hugh3
Is there not, however, such a thing as a Moral Panic Panic?

For instance, if I manage to round up a dozen mouth-breathing parents to join
my group _Concerned Parents Against ASCII Porn On Twitter_ and it'll
immediately be picked up by thousands of new outlets. There'll be a hundred
front-page articles about the "New Puritanism" by next Sunday.

Bingo, we have a moral panic panic, and there's a moral panic panic to go with
every moral panic, usually on a much larger scale.

My real point here is to point out that the moral panic about Dungeons and
Dragons was probably never more than a very small number of people making a
small amount of noise, amplified by a media hungry for controversial stories
about stupid people.

PS. 8======D ----* (.)(.) pew pew pew

~~~
wlievens
It was more than a fringe phenomenon. There was even a movie based on this
train of thought, starring a now fairly respectable actor.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazes_and_Monsters>

 _Like the book on which it is based, the film treats the playing of
roleplaying games as indicative of deep neurotic needs. At least one
protagonist is (or at least appears to be) suffering from schizophrenia (or
some analogous condition) and in the end, the attainment of mature adulthood
by others players is accompanied by the abandonment of role-playing games._

------
Tycho
I misread the title as 'Dungeons & Dragons used to test prison security'. Like
some sort of walkthrough/role-play testing

    
    
        You are in a room with 2 prison guards
        The guards are armed with batons
        A mase spray can has been left on the ground
        There is a fold up chair in front of you ...

------
mcantor
_Predictably, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons in high school. Just as
predictably, I didn’t lose my virginity until I stopped._

Um... it's 2011. Are we really still making "nerds can't get laid" jokes? I
mean, _Vin Diesel_ plays Dungeons & Dragons. I'm not offended or anything; the
author is clearly joking, but it seems pretty low-brow for the opening hook on
something posted to HN.

EDIT:

 _It's an established fact that Dungeons & Dragons is a bigger threat to human
reproduction than all the gay marriages in the world._

Oh whoops. OK... complaint retracted. I expressly condone the usage of dated
nerd jokes if used to setup a punchline this hilarious.

That'll teach me to comment before reading the rest of the friendly article.

EDIT 2:

I thought this sounded familiar... this is from January, _2010_! Obligatory:
<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/27/>

~~~
hugh3
_Are we really still making "nerds can't get laid" jokes?_

Yes we are. We are also still making jokes about amoral lawyers, lying
politicians, vain and vacuous models, lunk-headed bodybuilders, drunken frat
boys, obese and poorly-dressed Walmart customers, and unintelligent, docile
cows.

If you're offended by the subset of these which are about nerds not getting
laid then, dude, you need to get laid.

~~~
mcantor
Excellent point, but:

> _I'm not offended or anything..._

Also, I meant "we" as a community of intelligent hackers more than "we" as a
global culture. I'm aware that jokes about undersexed nerds and beerful bros
_exist_ , but I thought that they are more hackneyed than the HN crowd would
usually countenance. My second edit, I think, neatly explicates why it got
posted here anyway. :-)

------
jlesk
Related to D&D and startups, my current project is a web-based virtual
tabletop for roleplaying, built on node. =)

<http://tabletopquest.com>

~~~
harisenbon
why did you choose isomorphic over a top-down view? It looks interesting,
though.

I had made a RPG mapping/gaming thing in flash WAY back in the day, and had
always thought about making it into a web version. Never got around to it,
though.

Good luck with yours. =)

~~~
jlesk
All of the top-down approaches just look ugly to me. You're either looking at
the top of people heads, or tokens of disembodied heads. This also gives it a
pseudo-3d look, with a bit of clutter to add that homey tabletop atmosphere.

~~~
chipsy
I came to the opposite conclusion. When you add perspective to game
visualizations, it becomes harder to judge distances, estimate angles, make
out details, and identify borders. Small items tend to get reduced to squint-
inducing shapes. Large items occlude each other and cause an infuriating
visibility problem. The only advantage is that it looks a little bit more like
a "real" world, but if you're using a simplified art style, it doesn't matter
anyway.

From a UX standpoint, the best balance is "iconic" perspective - most things
rendered flat with low occlusion, like an Egyptian painting, much of medieval
art, or Japanese woodblock prints. All the boundaries can remain clearly
delineated with this style, but aesthetics can be retained through careful
composition of each icon.

I did exactly this style for the game I'm working on. My reference
points(within video games) are Ultima 1-5, Heroes of Might and Magic, and
Battle for Wesnoth. In these games you are never wondering what something is,
because you can always make out what it looks like.

~~~
jlesk
Normally I'd agree with you, for those exact reasons, and my first prototypes
were all generally flat (also being a fan of the Ultima series.)

But when I tried the current isometric style on a whim, it managed to solve
all of the problems I was trying to address. Probably because I use a hybrid
approach: only the underlying battlemat tiles are isometric. The miniatures
are flat, slightly-transparent stand-ups and always face the player.

------
phenylene
Relevant: <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/27/>

------
tehwalrus
this made me sad. I am tempted to post them my set of 20 sided dice.

------
mobileed
this is irrelevant topic, for one, and it's also irrelevant in terms of even
getting a voice! Once you go to prison for what this guy did (1st degree
murder with a sledge hammer) your rights are no more. And when you have no
rights, you don't even have a voice on the matter. You are to rot the rest of
your f __cking life in a jail cell. (period)

~~~
pjscott
It sucks when someone gets murdered with a hammer, to put it lightly. That's
why we ostensibly put murderers in jail: to keep them from killing again, to
deter others, and perhaps to rehabilitate them. But your comment shows another
motive, one that I find a lot less defensible: revenge. You want the criminals
to suffer, in a perpetual act of state-sponsored sadism.

I don't want that. I wish other people didn't. It just feels sick to me.

------
SoftwareMaven
Personally, I think the reasoning is completely bogus, however, I'm all for
not allowing people to spend their day playing D&D while I and other tax
payers pay for it (and I'll expand the D&D to _anything_ that does not fall in
the restitution or rehabilitation buckets).

On the other hand, I could see D&D being a good rehabilitation tool.

Personal rant aside, D&D sure seems like it would be a LOT better than some
things I've read about in prison, but I also don't know the dynamics of prison
life. Maybe the hierarchy of thugdom exhibits in potentially anything with a
"leader" there.

~~~
stcredzero
One of my bosses got a lot of his "think on your feet" chops from D&D. He was
damn good. No one _ever_ caught him flat footed without an answer and all of
his answers sounded good and scored a point for his side. I asked him once
where it came from, and he told me it was playing D&D.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I love D&D. Many of my best memories of my early teen-age years revolve around
D&D. I think D&D could be part of a good therapeutic tool, and if it is used
as one, great, seriously.

I just have a hard time with the notion of "hanging out in prison, doing
whatever I want." Prison should have a rehabilative aspect to it, for sure. It
should also work as a _very strong_ disincentive.

Unfortunately, we don't seem to be doing either very well.

~~~
demallien
The thing is, prison is already a heavy punishment. You don't get to see your
family/friends. You can't stay current with your work environment. You don't
get to go on holidays. You don't even get to choose meal times, bed time, or
when you would like to do sport.

It's already a lousy experience for inmates - they've had a lot of freedoms
taken away (note, I don't think this is a bad thing), but from there to
denying them anything to distract themselves from their plight is quite cruel.

------
jrockway
I used to think that blogging couldn't hurt your career. Then I read this
post.

From the sidebar:

 _This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting,
sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S.
associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past four years._

Then we have the following professional-sounding quotes:

 _I used to play Dungeons & Dragons in high school. Just as predictably, I
didn’t lose my virginity until I stopped._

 _any D &D “gang” member would find themselves tossing salads faster than you
can say_

I stopped reading at about this point. If you are going to do a legal analysis
on your bullshit placement firm's blog, try to err on the side of being too
professional. If you are going to make jokes, try to at least be funny.

~~~
burgerbrain
He made it pretty clear it was self-depreciative humour. If this blog post
_actually_ offended you, instead of merely making you think that others might
be offended, then I suggest that you lighten up a bit.

~~~
jrockway
I'm offended by such bad writing.

~~~
burgerbrain
Remember, you can't _give_ offence, you can only _take_ it. If you are
offended by something, you have nobody but yourself to blame.

~~~
hugh3
That's a fairly silly attitude to take. Once can quite easily (common English
idioms aside) give offence. One can't go around being gratuitously offensive
to people and then blaming them for being offended. That's called "being a
dick".

In this particular case, though, one would have to be extremely thin-skinned
to be offended.

~~~
burgerbrain
Nobody but you _can be_ or _should be_ responsible for _your_ emotions. It is
_entirely up to you_ how you respond to somebody "being a dick", not to
mention that's a completely subjective thing in the first place.

