Illinois Lawyer Referrals and Legal Guidance

From the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin this week:

Court rules that inmate cannot play fantasy game in prison

An inmate who has played Dungeons & Dragons since childhood cannot play the role-playing game in prison, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a trial judge’s ruling granting summary judgment to Wisconsin prison officials on inmate Kevin T. Singer’s claim that his First Amendment right to free speech was violated.

Singer, 33, is serving life in prison for first-degree intentional homicide.

“After all, punishment is a fundamental aspect of imprisonment, and prisons may choose to punish inmates by preventing them from participating in some of their favorite recreations,” Judge John Daniel Tinder wrote for the three-judge panel in Monday’s decision.

In 2005, Singer sued the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, contending that prison officials would not allow him to play Dungeons & Dragons, in which players develop fictional stories and adopt the personae of characters.

Singer was able to have game-related publications in his prison cell, but in 2004, a prison official received an anonymous letter from an inmate claiming that Singer and three others were forming a Dungeons & Dragons gang.

The prison official ordered a search of cells of inmates named in the letter, which resulted in the confiscation of 21 books and 14 magazines from Singer’s cell, according to Monday’s decision.

The prison official then sent a letter to Singer stating that inmates could not have the game-related publications or play the game “because it promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possibly gambling,” Monday’s decision quotes from the letter.

But Singer supplied the trial judge with 15 affidavits rejecting the notion that the game promotes gang activity. The affidavits came from other inmates, Singer’s brother and three role-playing game experts, Monday’s decision said.

Experts said the game has positive rehabilitative effects on inmates, while improving their math and reading skills. One of the inmates — who admitted his own gang affiliation — said he had never heard of a gang of Dungeons & Dragons players.

But U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller of the Eastern District of Wisconsin granted summary judgment, concluding that prison officials are accorded wide-ranging deference in adopting policies that are needed to preserve internal order and security.

Stadtmueller found that Singer failed to show that a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the Dungeons & Dragons policy was reasonably related to the prison’s legitimate penological interests of maintaining safety and security and curbing gang activity.

Singer then appealed the case in the 7th Circuit.

“Despite Singer’s large quantum of affidavit testimony that D&D is not associated with gangs and that the game can improve inmate rehabilitation, he has failed to demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact concerning the reasonableness of the relationship between Waupun’s D&D ban and the prison’s clearly legitimate penological interests,” Tinder wrote.