“Let’s say that I make plastic ducks and that I sell them to a broke-ass deadbeat with an addiction to…well… plastic ducks. The ducks cost me a dollar to make and I sell them to the junkie for … “
Paul Wright
By Elie Mystal
A Wisconsin prisoner, Kevin T. Singer, sued Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution after the guards confiscated his D&D materials.
Why did the prison guards take away this guy’s D&D paraphernalia? I’ll let Judge John Tinder of the Seventh Circuit explain:
Waupun’s long-serving Disruptive Group Coordinator, Captain Bruce Muraski, received an anonymous letter from an inmate. The letter expressed concern that Singer and three other inmates were forming a D&D gang and were trying to recruit others to join by passing around their D&D publications and touting the “rush” they got from playing the game. Muraski, Waupun’s expert on gang activity, decided to heed the letter’s advice and “check into this gang before it gets out of hand.”
Singer sued the prison for violating his First Amendment rights. The district court ruled with the correctional facility on summary judgment, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed.
Does that mean we get to hear the Seventh Circuit argue that D&D is gang-like? Yes it does. Will that be hilarious? More fun than hacking through an encampment of goblins with a dwarven ax of immolation.
Read the rest: Seventh Circuit Rules Dungeons & Dragons A Threat to Prison Security – Above the Law – A Legal Tabloid.
January 26, 2010
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