http://www.chesscafe.com/text/spinr...

<�To those who have taken up chess as an intellectual and fascinating pastime, and who are often beaten at odds by players of inferior grammar, it will be cheering to know that many persons are skilful chessplayers, though in some instances their brains, in a general way, compare unfavourably with the cogitative faculties of a rabbit. They are simply familiar with the openings � the well-beaten paths discovered or devised by the masters of the game.�>>

There are also cases of strong chessplayers in their own right -not just chessplaying politicians and committee members-finding themselves behind bars. For example, the two US International Masters, Norman Whitaker and Raymond Weinstein were jailed respectively for confidence trickery and murder. The Yugoslav Grandmaster Milan Matulovic was sentenced to nine months for careless driving after a fatal car crash, while the two world champions Wilhelm Steinitz and Bobby Fischer both found themselves under arrest for bizarre reasons. Steinitz, was arrested and accused of spying when the moves of some of his correspondence games were intercepted. The authorities suspected that the moves were coded military secrets. Meanwhile, Bobby Fischer was arrested in Pasadena in May 1981 under suspicion of being a bank robber. Other chessplayers, including Alexandre Deschapelles, James Mortimer,as we have seen, Ludek Pachman, Alex Wojtkiewicz and Vladimir Petrov were all jailed for political dissidence or matters of principle.

While inside,we are told, Mortimer taught his fellow inmates how to play chess. This is all well and good, but I have re -thought this entire matter of how best to handle the criminal classes. Surely, by insisting on physical exercise, we are helping to breed stronger and fitter criminals to be given free run on our streets. Meanwhile, by encouraging chess, or other mind games for inmates, we are, in fact, assisting recidivists to develop Moriarty-like cunning for their new forays, once released, to be unleashed against the law-abiding citizenry.

Surely this is all wrong thinking-the result of discredited wishy washy liberalism and the false belief that the criminal classes can be successfully rehabilitated.The harsh but true answer , actually, is as follows, following what I now christen the <PUFF PASTRY THEORY OF PENAL REFORM> The prison population should a) be deprived of all contact with chess and other mind-enhancing activities, and b) cut off from all forms of physical exercise and fed on an exclusive diet of cholesterol-forming, high calorie cream cakes. This way, we will ensure that instead of dangerously fit and intelligent malefactors being reintroduced into society, all REPEAT OFFENDERS would, in fact, become stunningly stupid, lumberingly obese and absolutely ill-equipped to elude the constabulary by running away successfully from any crime they might commit in the future.