Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.
The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups. Story continued here.
Idiots
This is complete nonsense.
Somewhere I read this before. I commented there as well. The concept is absurd. Books do indeed need to be vetted, to make sure they don’t contain razor blades and cocaine.
Vetting of these books as appropriate reading material for persons in Federal prison is much more difficult. Certainly all persons should be given as much freedom as possible to read whatever they wish to read, however it is of course obvious that people in prison have lost any number of their rights – well lost is perhaps not the best term perhaps forfeited is more appropriate.
They certainly don’t have the same right to go the corner store for a slurpee, yet the retain the right not to be beaten. However I feel, that religious texts, and for that matter any texts, should be vetted at first instance by an officer of the institution. If that officer finds no objection then the item shall be released. Should that officer have cause for concern it should proceed to a local panel, and then perhaps a local panel of higher officials. (These panels of course to swear under oath that they have read the full text of the item in question.)
Failing a local pass, there should be a regional board, and then of course a Federal board. It would add a great deal of transparency if there were non-BOP affiliared members of the regional and federal boards.
These boards should be compromised of chaplains from the BOP, non-supervisory correctional staff of the BOP and librarians employed by the BOP who are familaiar with the collection at the institution affected. Of course outsiders must also be included (In the spirit of the Republic of Ireland’s Prison Visitors program). Religious leaders – not in the sense of high profile leaders, but in the sense of leading a congregation- of which the text applies; a representative from the BOP union with an intrest in the topic who volunteers for the boars, and librarians employed by other Federal agencies.
During the pendancy of the review of a text proposed for inclusion but initally denied by non-librarian BOP staff, the text shall be made available to the one inmate who requested the text.
Should more than one inmate but less than (a percentage or set number per institution not to exceed 25) inmats request the item it shall remain in the quarterly local board review. Should any requests exceed this threshold then it shall be elevated immediatly to the next level of review.
In any case any decision not made to restrict a text within 180 days of the written request of an inmate shall be approved by executive order.
That seems to solve that problem. I’ve told my congressmen have you told yours?