Removing Religious Books and Religious Freedom from U.S. Prisons
In a second New York Times article, Laurie Goodstein reports that there is mounting outrage from religious organizations and elected officials across the political spectrum over the federal Bureau of Prison’s decision to remove selected religious books from prison libraries.
The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of some of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, sent a letter on Wednesday to the bureau’s director, Harley G. Lappin, saying, “We must ensure that in America the federal government is not the undue arbiter of what may or may not be read by our citizens.”
Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said in an interview, “Anything that impinges upon the religious liberties of American citizens, be they incarcerated or not, is something that’s going to cause House conservatives great concern.”
The bureau, the target of a class-action lawsuit by prisoners because of the book purge, is hearing criticism from a broad array of religious groups and leaders. Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group based in Washington, sent an alert to its members, who within 48 hours sent the bureau more than 15,000 e-mail messages urging it to scrap the policy. The issue is also a hot topic on conservative Christian talk radio shows.
Spokesmen for the Bureau of Prisons said it was not reconsidering its policy. The bureau said it was prompted to act by a report in 2004 from the inspector general of the Department of Justice, which mentioned that since most prisons did not catalog their library materials, radical books that incite violence and hatred could infiltrate the shelves.
Initially, the bureau set out to take an inventory of every book and item in its chapel libraries. When the list grew to the tens of thousands, the bureau decided instead to generate lists of acceptable books and materials — about 150 items for each of 20 religions or religious categories. It calls that plan the Standardized Chapel Library Project.
Needless to say (except to the Bureau of Prisons officials who haven’t gotten the message), it is a violation of prisoners’ Constitutional rights, under the First Amendment, and once again, for the second time this week, (previously, in the case of Andrew Meyer, subject to tasering) we quote from the document:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
We do not find any exception for prisoners. While the Constitution never explicitly spells out a “right to privacy” it does not allow any curtailment of freedom of religion and religious expression. While we must advocate that our Internet surfing not be subject to data mining, and that our financial data kept more securely and not so often and so readily lost in data breaches, we should still be able to count on inalienable rights, regardless of whether or not we are behind bars. In weighter matters of faith, belief and salvation, the government must not impose hardships, barriers or penalties. No, not even to fight terrorism, as the Bureau of Prisons maintains it is doing, as reported by the New York Times, in an article earlier this month.
Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, ”discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”
Ms. Billingsley said, ”We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts.”
But prison chaplains, and groups that minister to prisoners, say that an administration that put stock in religion-based approaches to social problems has effectively blocked prisoners’ access to religious and spiritual materials — all in the name of preventing terrorism.
”It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,” said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian group. ”There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.”
There is a long history of prisoners finding faith and redemption, and successfully turning their lives around. Numerous ministries are devoted to that very purpose. The well-known Charles Colson, formerly a Watergate conspirator, founder of Prison Fellowship is one such example.
It’s quite disturbing to learn that the federal Bureau of Prisons, with a panel of experts, whose names have not been made public, have decided which religious books are suitable and which are not:
The Bureau of Prisons said it relied on experts to produce lists of up to 150 book titles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories — everything from Bahaism to Yoruba. The lists will be expanded in October, and there will be occasional updates, Ms. Billingsley said. Prayer books and other worship materials are not affected by this process.
The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller.
Those are strange omissions, indeed. We don’t see much extremism in those theologians that would lead to terrorist activities. Not from Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man: a Christian Interpretation, or Schuller’s The Be Happy Attitudes. We can only hope that the concerted efforts of religious organizations, members of Congress, and the ensuing lawsuit can bring a stop to this.
[...] Privacy Maven noted earlier, there were two New York Times articles, published on September 10 and September 21, which brought [...]