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No Grand Theft Auto In Prison?
Thanks to Frictionless Insight for pointing to an Australian article discussing a judge's suggestion that Grand Theft Auto-style games not be available in prison. According to the report, "Bradley Scott McConkey... led police on a 200km car chase at speeds of up to 180 kilometres per hour, as well as stealing cars at knifepoint and committing armed robbery on two businesses", and additionally, "...a psychologist's report said McConkey had played Playstation's Grand Theft Auto during a previous jail term." Due to the similarity of the games and the crime, the judge suggested "...the appropriateness of Grand Theft Auto-style games in a prison environment was questionable", since it "provides opportunities for rehearsing their destructive activities."
I fail to see what benefit the availability of video games has towards rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation is not a goal of the US prison system. Making money and keeping inmates away from the population are the goals. Rehabilitation is only a goal of juvenile facilities usually. Once you're in the adult system, they aren't even trying to rehabilitate you. That would be too expensive.
GTA3 was released locally, but pulled off the shelves after a month or so, mainly due to the fact that the game allowed you not only to have sex with a prostitute, but to attack her after the deed and steal your money back. Shooting random pedestrians is seemingly ok, but when combined with sex it becomes a no-no. The game was then re-released sans prostitution, and no other changes as far as I'm aware of (the girls are still there, but are just pedestrians now). When Vice City was released, it was prostitution-free from the beginning, to stop the ban happening again.
There was a fuss a while back about this same topic, prisoners allowed to play GTA3 while incarcerated, but it died down with no real result, as most issues do down here.