Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure

Trepidity writes "In a case that has been winding its way through the courts for a while now, a Wisconsin prison banned inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons, using the justification that 'one player is denoted the Dungeon Master... [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players... [which] mimics the organization of a gang.' The prison also cited some sparse evidence that a handful of non-inmate D&D players once committed some crimes that allegedly were related to their D&D playing. On Monday the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulation (PDF) against challenges from inmates. The court appeared skeptical of the ban, sarcastically referring to it as the 'war on D&D,' but upheld it nonetheless as having a 'rational basis.' Law professor Ilya Somin suggests that the court may have had no choice, given how deferential rational-basis review usually is."

Comments

Re:Is it just D&D ?

[dangitman]

I would be categorized as a Christian fundamentalist,

That's pretty interesting. Why would one classify oneself as a Fundamentalist? The category of self-aware fundamentalist must be vanishingly small - because if you recognize that you've become a fundamentalist, wouldn't you want to do everything possible to quit being a fundamentalist?