Corcoran's Heroes

Butter You Up

Good morning, afternoon, day, and evening. I hope this post finds you all in good health.

This is a bit different than what we are used to on here, as it involved helping people other than ourselves. I don't mean to be on my high horse or soapbox, but I am posting this in an effort to appeal to your goodwill and sense of giving. More on that in a moment.

As some of you may know, in addition to moderating this forum, I also am a community college professor who teaches within the California State Penitentiary System. As a firm believer in Inmate rehabilitation, I often find other ways to drive rehabilitation outside of classroom teaching. At one of my facilities - California State Prison Corcoran - I have recently become aware of a group called "Corcoran's Heroes." This is a role-playing group inside of the prison who are granted program time during their incarceration (5:30 - 8:00 pm T/TH) to game.

WHAT A FUCKING AWESOME WAY REHAB!! I will get to what I am asking momentarily, but first, I thought it would be good to introduce the group in their own words.

The purpose of the group is as follows:
1) Employ the use of role playing in a unique, creative environment for the purpose of educating and rehabilitating.
2) Using a self help style approach to re-framing the thought process and self imposed limitations/separations typically encouraged by the criminal lifestyle.
3) To encourage the use of reading, writing, and math so as to help further educate all participants.
4) To prepare inmates for reentry into society, in an effort to reduce recidivism and decrease the risk to public safety by using the following skills: communication, skill building, conflict resolution, anger management, reading, writing, mathematics, victim's impact, denial management, and social economics.
5) To help educate group participants in ways of developing positive responsible behaviors, values, and mature decision making skills.

Membership is available to anyone who wants to game.

My favorite part: if you miss 3 consecutive gaming meetings, you will be dropped from the membership list (lol yesssss). If anyone would like to see the official memorandum regarding the group's legitimacy, just send me a DM and I will get it to you.

Ok, so what's the point of this?

The point is simply this:
This group (and groups like it) are extremely vulnerable in this atmosphere. They rely on outside donations to ensure they keep going. That's where we all come in. No doubt, we all have some gaming/RPG rulebooks, assets, etc. that we could do without. Well, if that describes you, then this group could really use your help. Keep in mind that this is a completely positive way for a group of society's most at risk members to rehabilitate and stay on the right path during their stay within a maximum security facility. Anything will help.

Here is a list of what can be donated, should you feel the need:
- Roleplaying Books: rulebooks. Any game system will work.
- Game mats/flip mats
- Dry erase markers/crayons
- Character sheets/folios: if you send an RPG book, send character sheets. Easy as that.
- Sheet protectors: gotta keep them sheets clean.
- Polyhedral Dice (d20/12/10/8/6/4): 2 sets of 7 per order/4 sets max (I legit don't really know how many that is, but it's on the sheet)
- Miniatures (Pewter/Plastic only): no limit
- Tiles (Paper/Wood/Plastic only): no limit
- Magic the Gathering Cards: CURRENTLY NOT ALLOWED FOR SOME FUCKING REASON --> in the process of being approved


OK, so that's my post. If you have anything you are willing to part with, please send me a DM or respond directly on here and I will get a hold of you. Being inside a facility, I really cannot emphasize how much of a different this makes in these guys' lives. Having something to look forward to, the hope of gaming, the fun of camaraderie, it really makes a difference. So, please, if you can part with anything, please let me know.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Let's make gaming a cornerstone of rehabilitation.

I'm honestly surprised dice are allowed but not magic cards

This is extremely cool to see - love the thought and your drive to help the program. That rule about dropping players is also golden. I definitely want to help but have a couple questions.

Would it be more helpful for me to scrounge around for RPG materials id be willing to part with or just donate some money to you or someone else there to buy what they need?

I've been tempted to give up my 40k RPG collection (heresy I know!) But not sure if I'd rather donate those or give them to a member here.

Likewise I might be willing to part ways with my DND rulebooks down the line but not sold just yet.

When it comes to stuff like dice and smaller items....for the shipping cost it seems like it might make more sense to just send money or buy shit on Amazon and have it delivered to your home or the facility itself if possible.

But you tell me - you're the one on site and will know what's most helpful. I would be happy to contribute because this is an awesome, awesome cause.

Wendigo Bob wrote:

I'm honestly surprised dice are allowed but not magic cards

It doesn't have to do with safety and security, but with monetary values of the cards themselves. They are working with the regulators now to impose a limit on how many cards someone can have at any time to allow donations to start coming in.

Bobarctor wrote:

Would it be more helpful for me to scrounge around for RPG materials id be willing to part with or just donate some money to you or someone else there to buy what they need?

Either or. I would rather not do any buying with other people's money; in fact, if it is easier to simply purchase any of the above online new or used and have them shipped to me (and it definitely is for those across the ocean wanting to help out - shout outs to Chris, Nik, and Andrew), then that works too. I will then put together a care package of everything donated and take it with me when I head to one of my classes.

Regarding 40k, I am almost positive that they don't have any of that at all. From what it sounds like, they just have DnD. But whether or not you want to donate some of those, or give them to your peeps there, is up to you of course.

I had a feeling you would be 1000% on board with this one. I will do some recon when I go there on Tuesday and see what game rules sets they currently have on hand and what they don't and go from there.

Also, this is currently only a program in one of the institution I teach at; in fact, it may only be one one yard of that institution. If that is so, I plan on seeing how I can help spread this program to different yards and institutions.

Iron and Metal wrote:

Either or. I would rather not do any buying with other people's money; in fact, if it is easier to simply purchase any of the above online new or used and have them shipped to me (and it definitely is for those across the ocean wanting to help out - shout outs to Chris, Nik, and Andrew), then that works too. I will then put together a care package of everything donated and take it with me when I head to one of my classes.

Regarding 40k, I am almost positive that they don't have any of that at all. From what it sounds like, they just have DnD. But whether or not you want to donate some of those, or give them to your peeps there, is up to you of course.

I had a feeling you would be 1000% on board with this one. I will do some recon when I go there on Tuesday and see what game rules sets they currently have on hand and what they don't and go from there.

Also, this is currently only a program in one of the institution I teach at; in fact, it may only be one one yard of that institution. If that is so, I plan on seeing how I can help spread this program to different yards and institutions.

Dope. Don't mean to sound fussy, just wanted to put some effort into providing them with materials they'll appreciate and make use of - as opposed to just mailing whatever random crap I am trying to Marie Kondo

As an update here, I was emailing the College Coordinator of Corcoran State Penitentiary a month or so back about this. She is pretty notorious for not emailing back in an acceptable time frame, so I was staying on her. When she finally got back to me, she said that "Corcoran's Heroes" was not an officially sanctioned inmate group, and thus would not be allowed any donations.

This was contradictory information than what I had previously had. I emailed asking for a clarification and then we went into quarantine. As of right now, I've no idea where this stands, but one of two things could be happening.

1) It very well could have been an inmate started and led group that had not yet gone through the proper channels for official approval.

2) She is not looking closely enough into it in order to minimize her own work load. I assume this might be the case as I asked multiple times for clarification on who one staff member was - the name I had as a contact for the group - and never received a response to my questions one way or another.

Just an update for those interested.

Thanks for the update.

I can't do much but I hope you'll be able to break the administrative resistance to help these guys out in their rehabilitation.

"Officially Sanctioned" to me just sounds like a bunch of bureaucratic red tape. I understand its necessity - you cannot have inmates forming a "White Power Board Game and Luncheon" group, but in this case it is proving to be more a pain in the ass than helpful.

I mean, we all know how helpful/therapeutic/venting gaming can be. I imagine that if I were locked up, the Tuesday gaming meetup would be something I very much looked forward to.

So, I will keep at it and talk to whomever I need to. But it is becoming readily apparent to me how true it is when people say that dealing with Prison Administration can be an "uphill battle."

Thanks for your interest and response, Gurk. I appreciate it.