Board games for prison inmates

Victor Manuel Cordoba, a civil servant Mexico City's penitentiary system, believes you can learn a lot from board games. CGTN's Alasdair Baverstock reports.

CGTN’s Alasdair Baverstock reports. Watch the original story on CGTN America

Cordoba is so passionate about them that since 1992, he has invented more than 60, and takes them into the prisons of the Mexican capital, believing he can rehabilitate the penitentiary’s inmates through teaching them how to play.

“I always tell them, life is like a board game, and criminals are people who have adopted a bad strategy,” Cordoba said. “When they lose in the board games I play with them, I look at how they played their game, and very often I can give them advice on how to act on unhelpful impulses in future, not only in the game, but in life itself.”

Over 26 years, Victor said his way of teaching ex-cons to look at life as a series of strategic decisions, has turned lives around.