Good and bad religions, and prison libraries

This article in the NY Times shows the problems caused by refusing to distinguish between good religions and bad religions.

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.”

It's common sense not to allow inmates to read radical Islamic materials. But the problem is, in order not to discriminate against Islam, the Bureau of Prisons took the sledgehammer approach of banning books from all religions.

It would make a lot more sense to just ban Islamic books, or at least limit the Islamic library to approved titles. There's no need to ban books of peaceful non-terrorist religions. The inmates who are heavily into peaceful religions like Christianity, Orthodox Judaism, or even Mormonism (the Mountain Meadows Massacre excepted), are less likely to be recidivist when they are released.

Comments

Maybe if prison officials made Buddhism mandatory is would cut the recidivist rate even more.

Do we even know if this is a problem? Prisoners at Camp Delta get a Koran but we need to worry about non-terrorists in a regular prison?

And the implication from the article seems to be that prisoners can buy whatever they want with their own money, so it sounds like with donations they can be steered to the radical stuff we wanted them to avoid....

[superdestroyer]

As a side story about the Bureau of Prisons, I did a consulting job at the Bureau of Prisons that involved the x-ray system that using backscatter x-rays to look "under your clothes"
http://www.as-e.com/products_solutions/smart_check.asp

The prisons were the first placed in the U.S. to use the systems. They government project managers said that prisoners are a great test of any security system because they have nothing else to do but try to beat you. It took the prisoners about a day to figure out how to smuggle homemade knives by the system.

Thus, any system that is designed to keep radical islamic literature away from prisoners is probably doomed to failure.

[JewishAtheist]

It's like they've never even heard of the first Amendment.

[Half Sigma]

In response to Jewish Atheist above, the majority of people's rights are taken away from them when they are incarcerated.

[JewishAtheist]

Is there legal precedent for denying freedom of religion to inmates though?

Hopefully, this citizen imprisoned in Colorade will soon be released to resume the exercise of his Constitutional Rights:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=477278&in_page_id=1811

I imagine that a terrible injustice has been done to Mr. Glenn.

[TGGP]

I've heard neo-Nazi religions like Asatru/Odinism are legally protected in prison. There was one prisoner of that type who murdered another after that one dishonored his shrine.

[Jim Beam]

How come you aren't endorsing the policy of stocking prison libraries with atheist literature?

[Jesus]

If said religion is a threat to national security for the country harboring the incarcerated, which radical islam now is in the United States, I feel that the prisons have every right and even a duty to prevent such threats - especially from known criminals.