The Federal Bureau of Prisons is guilty of “flagrant disregard” of the First Amendment through its widespread removal of religious books and resources from chapel libraries, a Southern Baptist church-state specialist says.
The Bureau of Prisons has ordered chaplains to purge their libraries’ shelves of books, videos, CDs and tapes not on a list of approved materials, according to reports by The New York Times and Associated Press. With recommendations from a group of experts, the bureau compiled lists of as many as 150 books and 150 other resources for each of 20 religions or religious bodies. The new policy, however, has resulted in thousands of books being removed from some libraries. The long-delayed effort was instituted after a 2004 report from the Justice Department made recommendations for prisons to follow in order to prevent the conversion of inmates to radical forms of Islam and other religions that promote violence, a bureau official told The Times.
The policy violates the “free speech and religious free exercise guarantees” of the First Amendment to the Constitution, said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
The bureau’s approach “is like taking a nuclear missile to a quail hunt,” Land said. “The Federal Bureau of Prisons clearly has a right to censor material that would incite violence. However, while prisoners do not have all the rights that are guaranteed to Americans who are not incarcerated, they have not been reduced to only being allowed access to those religious materials that have the Bureau of Prisons’ stamp of approval.
“A far better solution would be to have the Bureau of Prisons personnel, working in conjunction with our federal chaplains in each prison, to identify and remove from circulation only those materials which incite hatred and violence, as opposed to the current policy,” he said.