Photo: Alex Garcia, Chicago Tribune
Chess in prisons
In recent years, we have witnessed the successful introduction of chess in prisons through different educative programs in the USA, Armenia, Norway, Russia, England, Brazil, Italy and Spain, with very positive outcomes.
In prisons, just as in wider society, the impact of sport and games can be far-reaching. The experiences referred above demonstrate that chess improves behaviour, helping to reduce inmate violence and developing communication skills, while promoting positive use of leisure time. Chess also drastically improves the decision-making capabilities of a group of people that, very often due to the lack of opportunities and access to proper education, has ended up in jail after making a wrong choice in life. Besides, the game has a positive impact on the inmates’ overall health, fighting depression, stress and anxiety, and motivating them to change for the better.
€29.90
The Therapeutic Community (TC) is a classic concept in addiction intervention that emerged in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. It is an approach based on peer support and many and varied activities, which in themselves function as a therapeutic intervention.
Today the concept has evolved and many of these communities are located in urban areas. The Club Magic Extremadura Deportivo-Social currently collaborates in two of them: “La Garrovilla” (Mérida) and “Arca de Noé” (Badajoz) the latter continues to use a traditional approach. In both centres, our club uses its methodology of Cognitive Training through Chess, in this case called “Cognitive Rehabilitation in black and white”, which is supported by the highest official body in Extremadura in the fight against addictions, the Technical Secretariat of Drug Addictions of the
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Chess in prisons
Juan Antonio Montero. Psychologist, director of the program and director of the Club Magic Extremadura Deportivo-Social
The prison in Badajoz being somewhat larger, between the two they guard a little over a thousand prisoners. The immense majority of them are men, a pattern that is repeated in Spain and everywhere else, with slight variations: between 5 and 10% are women, no more. Registration to participate in the two workshops of our program is logically voluntary only problematic inmates are restricted, otherwise anyone can participate. In our case the percentage of women participants is very high although there is talk in some forums of discrimination against women in prisons, as far as we know, in workshops of any kind, there has never been any.