Home : Poker News : Missing-Person Playing Cards For Inmates Meant To Solve Crimes
by Sean Chaffin | Published: Oct 26, 2023 Electronic Products Cushion
Prisoners often turn to card games to pass some time, and an Ohio organization is hoping some of those games of poker, pinochle, or spades can help solve crimes and missing persons cases.
The nonprofit group Cleveland Missing works to aid families missing loved ones and is handing out special playing card decks to prisoners in northern Ohio. Each card features a different case and organizers hope inmates might provide some information.
“We picked cold cases, and tried to stay between (year) 2000 to 2017 or 2019,” the group’s law enforcement liaison Devan Althen told Fox News. “We wanted them to be older cases that don’t have a lot of traction anymore.”
Once organizers had a group of cases to feature in the deck, they narrowed the number down to those with the most details available. They also considered cases where families were still actively looking for the missing person.
In this deck, that ace of spades or deuce of diamonds features a photo of a missing person, age, date the person went missing, and the latest information on the case. Each card also includes the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation tip line.
“We all know that inmates love to talk, and so the hope is that while inmates are playing with these cards it triggers memories that they might have surrounding cases in these cards,” Althen says. “And then inmates start relaying these messages to law enforcement, and tips are being generated, so we’re able to start solving some of these cases.”
This isn’t the first time playing cards have been used for a greater cause. During the Iraq War, card maker Hoyle produced a deck featuring leaders from that regime. Saddam Hussein was displayed on the deck’s ace of spades.
During World War II, the U.S. Playing Card Company created some special decks to help prisoners of war find their way out of enemy territory.
“It was the company’s signature brand, Bicycle, that did the most for troops in the field,” Business Insider notes. “During World War II, Bicycle teamed up with British and American intelligence agencies to create a deck of cards that peeled apart when wet. The cards then revealed secret escape maps so downed pilots and captured soldiers could navigate their way back to Allied lines.”
Soldiers playing cards during their downtime also helped fuel poker’s popularity after the war. History buffs can even purchase a reproduction set of those special Bicycle decks known as the “Escape Map Deck.”
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