https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/dragons-in-the-department-of-corrections?utm_source=wpfbusads

This article popped up on my Facebook feed and I thought it was interesting.  It concerns playing D&D in prison and presents gaming in a pretty good light, if a little nerdy at points.  A person calls someone heckling their game a "level 6 NPC"!  
Do you think gaming can help rehabilitate people or is it just a fun read?

Sure. Roleplaying has a lot of potential for healing and providing various human needs & experiences.

Quote from: Patrick;928890Do you think gaming can help rehabilitate people or is it just a fun read?

Game theory and pure roleplaying can be a useful therapeutic tool, but that's not the kind of "roleplaying" "game" we talk about.

In theory tabletop RPGs can teach cooperation, positive socialization, communication skills and consensus decision making, but I've seen no real-world evidence for this.

Yeah, I'd read that text before. Fun read.

As for the OP's question, I'm not a mental health professional or corrections officer, and I have no scientific evidence of this, but given how many inmates come from broken, dysfunctional, dirt-poor homes and have known very little entertainment that doesn't involve getting in trouble with the law, playing RPGs is likely to be at least as therapeutic as playing basketball, learning a gainful craft, watching a movie or a live Johnny Cash concert, or any other communal activity that does not involve recreational pharmacology or deliberate physical violence.

As a former special education teacher, I have seen RPGs have tremendous positive effect on students. However, the power dynamic between GM and Players which is usually trivial with adults, can be a source of difficulties with teens.

How different adult inmates are from my disabled students is unknown to me.

However, even if there is no therapeutic value for inmates, the RPG hobby would give the inmates an avenue of social connection once they leave prison. And a very positive social connection as most gamers follow social norms and avoid illegal behavior - and most gamers are very accepting of other gamer's "quirks".

Having your parole officer discover your new crew of homies are all dice tossing gamers eating Cheetos has got to be better than most social circles inmates find outside of prison.

BTW, have any of you ever gamed with former convicts?

And did you give their PCs a free +1 with Shiv bonus and Grip Soap 14 or less?

Some prisons ban RPGs as "gambling" since it uses dice. So do one or two colleges I was informed.

I remember a very old issue of Dragon magazine had a letter about this topic. It was about how D&D was banned in most prisons because it elevated one person above others in a position of power (the DM).  Now of course one can argue this, but that's how many prisons viewed it, and therefore banned it.

Quote from: Patrick;928890https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/dragons-in-the-department-of-corrections?utm_source=wpfbusads

This article popped up on my Facebook feed and I thought it was interesting.  It concerns playing D&D in prison and presents gaming in a pretty good light, if a little nerdy at points.  A person calls someone heckling their game a "level 6 NPC"!  
Do you think gaming can help rehabilitate people or is it just a fun read?

This article popped up on my Facebook feed as well and was a fun read.

However, while I would be considered an expert at RPGs (35+ years experience) and am enthused by the idea of their usefulness in criminal rehabilitation or psychological counseling, I am very skeptical of the claimed benefits of RPGs in those realms. So far, every person who has come forward (mostly on the internet) and claimed to have helped someone confront their psychological or behavioral problems through RPGs and had the subject benefit from that use of a RPG has been demonstrated to be a fraud, the product of self-delusion by the GM into thinking they were a trained professional in the field of psychology or criminal rehabilitation. So while I am hopeful for the beneficial uses of RPGs as a tool for enriching a person's life, I do not think that a genius has yet appeared who knows how to use RPGs as that tool who is also a trained professional that can show us how (or the very least show us how to proceed).

I'd like that genius to show up, though.

Quote from: Spinachcat;928976However, the power dynamic between GM and Players which is usually trivial with adults, can be a source of difficulties with teens. How different adult inmates are from my disabled students is unknown to me. [...] BTW, have any of you ever gamed with former convicts?

Yes.

If you think the power dynamic is a problem with teens, you have no idea how magnified that is in a prison.  This is an environment where making eye contact with the wrong person can get you punched in the kidneys.  A game where one player has all the power and the rules are ambiguous by design?  Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons will look like an episode of MPL:FIM by the end.

Quote from: the article linkedDice, including the D20—a 20-sided die that's the hallmark of a gaming session—aren't allowed behind bars, so the inmates have gotten resourceful and instead use a set of 20 playing cards to make "rolls."

I wondered why dice were banned but cards were allowed; if it's because of gambling, you'd think both would be forbidden. Interesting that the players preferred lawful good alignments, too.

Quote from: jeff37923;928998This article popped up on my Facebook feed as well and was a fun read.

However, while I would be considered an expert at RPGs (35+ years experience) and am enthused by the idea of their usefulness in criminal rehabilitation or psychological counseling, I am very skeptical of the claimed benefits of RPGs in those realms. So far, every person who has come forward (mostly on the internet) and claimed to have helped someone confront their psychological or behavioral problems through RPGs and had the subject benefit from that use of a RPG has been demonstrated to be a fraud, the product of self-delusion by the GM into thinking they were a trained professional in the field of psychology or criminal rehabilitation. So while I am hopeful for the beneficial uses of RPGs as a tool for enriching a person's life, I do not think that a genius has yet appeared who knows how to use RPGs as that tool who is also a trained professional that can show us how (or the very least show us how to proceed).

I'd like that genius to show up, though.

I'd say you should just run as an impartial Referee and make a good game:). It's a hobby, just make it fun and remember that cheating is not safe for your health in prison games!
And as mentioned upthread, it's a potential hobby after prison, too, and it just might help them stay away from the wrong social circles.

Quote from: daniel_ream;929004Yes.

If you think the power dynamic is a problem with teens, you have no idea how magnified that is in a prison.  This is an environment where making eye contact with the wrong person can get you punched in the kidneys.  A game where one player has all the power and the rules are ambiguous by design?  Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons will look like an episode of MPL:FIM by the end.

A few ex-convicts over at TBP mentioned having played a lot of RPGs in prisons. One of them mentioned a Texas maximum security prison was where he played the most, and I'm sure one of them mentioned convicts were behaving when there was a game to avoid going in the hole and having to skip a game;).
I think the only warning was that sex scenes should follow the "curtains fall" rule, because describing sex would lead to the impression that the GM is willing to do sex favours:D!

Quote from: Omega;928986Some prisons ban RPGs as "gambling" since it uses dice. So do one or two colleges I was informed.

Only diceless storygames for the unlucky students at those ass-butt schools... or secret underground dice games.

Quote from: rawma;929009I wondered why dice were banned but cards were allowed; if it's because of gambling, you'd think both would be forbidden. Interesting that the players preferred lawful good alignments, too.

Probably because the people making such rules have an extremely poor understanding of the subject.

Quote from: Skarg;929048Probably because the people making such rules have an extremely poor understanding of the subject.

I'd agree with this.

It feels like a year ago, but I received an order for a Dungeon magazine on Amazon that would have required me to mail the magazine to an inmate of a medium security facility in Georgia. When I contacted the prison to see if it was allowed to be mailed there, I was met with a resounding "No!" by the staff who told me it would be considered contraband.

Quote from: AsenRG;929043A few ex-convicts over at TBP mentioned having played a lot of RPGs in prisons. One of them mentioned a Texas maximum security prison was where he played the most, and I'm sure one of them mentioned convicts were behaving when there was a game to avoid going in the hole and having to skip a game;).

I'm surprised.  I've seen four Jamaican drug dealers get into a brawl over the missing die from their scratch-built Ludi set.  I expect this is one of those things that's highly variable by state, institution and the specific people involved, but my experience was that something bad only has to happen once for something to get banned forever in a prison environment.  Min-med-max and PC vs. gen pop matters a lot, too.

Quote from: jeff37923;929102It feels like a year ago, but I received an order for a Dungeon magazine on Amazon that would have required me to mail the magazine to an inmate of a medium security facility in Georgia. When I contacted the prison to see if it was allowed to be mailed there, I was met with a resounding "No!" by the staff who told me it would be considered contraband.

Was that because of the content or because you'd have to ship it directly?  The institution I worked in had a rule that inmates could receive reading material, but it had to be shipped directly from the original publisher.  Otherwise associates would hide drugs or other contraband in the binding or pages.