No More D&D in Wisconsin Prisons

John Schwartz in the NY Times:

Prisons can restrict the rights of inmates to nerd out, a federal appeals court has found.

In an opinion issued on Monday, a three-judge panel of the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals hexed a lawsuit challenging a ban on the game of Dungeons & Dragons by the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.

The suit was brought by a prisoner, Kevin T. Singer, who argued that his First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights were violated by the prison’s decision to ban the game and confiscate his books and other materials — including a 96-page handwritten manuscript he had created for the game.

Mr. Singer, “a D&D enthusiast since childhood,” according to the court’s opinion, was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for bludgeoning and stabbing his sister’s boyfriend to death.

Prison officials said they banned the game at the recommendation of the prison’s specialist in gangs, who said it could lead to gang behavior and fantasies about escape.

The game could “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping from the real-life correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior,” prison officials said in court. That could make it more difficult to rehabilitate prisoners and could endanger public safety, they said.

The court acknowledged that there was no evidence of marauding gangs spurred to their acts of destruction by swinging imaginary mauls, but it ruled nonetheless that the prison’s decision was “rationally related” to legitimate goals of prison administration.

Wisconsin Department of Corrections officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Now I certainly agree that D&D promotes escapism, but what's wrong with escapism among prison inmates? The notion that D&D might lead to real gang behavior strikes me as especially silly. I doubt there was ever a group of people less like a gang than my old D&D crowd.

There is a long discussion of this at the Volokh Conspiracy, from which you can learn how many lawyers know a suspicious amount about D&D. Sample comments:

Of course the prison’s rule is justified. Magic-user prisoners might launch a Meteor Swarm at their jailers; inmates might slip a Phylacter of Love into a guard’s drink (or even worse, a Throat Leach.)

The only downside is that prisoners will no longer have the know-how to combat wayward Gelatinous Cubes or Beholders, which have a tendency to hang out in dank stone corridors. But I guess they should of thought of that before they robbed that 7–11.

And:

Obviously the regulation has a rational basis. Look at any high school. Who’s terrorizing the teachers? Who’s beating up other kids in the halls? Who’s injuring student athletes so badly they miss games?

The Dungeons and Dragons gangs, that’s who.

And:

I like my judges to have a Lawful Neutral alignment, so I agree he had to uphold it under rational basis review.