Oregon jails offer games to inmates

While a lot of politicians have recently expressed concern about making gamers into felons, penal institutions in Oregon are trying to do just the opposite--make felons into gamers. According to a BBC News report, the state's correctional system is allowing inmates with a clean disciplinary record for 18 months to purchase a plug-and-play gaming system with 50 simple arcade-style games on it to play on small-screen TVs in their cells.

The game system is part of an incentive program that gives prisoners the option to purchase 7-inch TVs and CD players after six months of good behavior, and ice cream and the gaming system (from peripheral manufacturer DreamGear) at 18 months, according to the BBC. The money for the purchases comes from wages the prisoners earn working in jail. Considering that 95 percent of the state's prisoners will one day be released, the incentives for good behavior are meant to help them "gravitate toward the prosocial behaviors critical to successful transition back to the community," the report says.