Leaders of a Christian ministry to inmates in state and federal prisons across the United States are praising the reversal by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons of its plans to remove religious materials, including books by C.S. Lewis, from jail library shelves.
“We applaud the Bureau of Prisons for listening to the concerns of a diversity of faith communities and returning those resources removed from chapel library shelves,” said former Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, now president of Prison Fellowship.
“We appreciate the Bureau’s commitment to keeping the small number of materials that incite violence out of prison chapel libraries. By returning to the common-sense approach of getting rid of only those materials that incite violence, they ensure that prisoners have access to a wide range of quality religious works that will help them become productive members of society when they are released back to our communities.”
As part of its goal of removing materials from inmates’ access areas that could incite violence, the bureau recently had removed all religious materials, including those by Rick Warren, Charles Schuller and Lewis, the author of the “Chronicles of Narnia,” from prison chapel libraries except a very limited number of resources.
This was done because the agency has been working on a review of all materials, in order to identify those considered problematic. But that project was delayed and officials decided to leap forward and remove all materials unless they had been reviewed and approved.
But the sudden loss of many faith-based materials prompted an outcry from chaplains with a number of religious organizations that work with inmates, including Prison Fellowship, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, former inmates and their families.
The policy, the group said, “impeded prisoners’ access to a variety of wholesome, faith-filled books.”
The federal agency then changed its course.
“The Bureau will begin immediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as materials that could be radicalizing or incite violence,” the federal agency said. “The review of all materials in chapel libraries will be completed by the end of January 2008.”
“It took years for chaplains, local churches and other religious organizations to build up the holdings of many prison chapel libraries,” Earley said. “It’s great to see that these works will now be restored for prisoners’ daily use.”
Officials with the Family Research Council said the government clearly was caught off-guard by the level of concern.
“Perhaps now the bureau can get on with the task of removing the books that might ‘incite violence’ instead of deciding which should be permitted to promote faith,” the group said in a newsletter.
Founded in 1976 by former Nixon aide Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship says more than two million people are serving time in America’s prisons. Nearly 700,000 are released into society each year, and studies show two-thirds will be re-arrested, and more than half return to prison for new crimes, within just 36 months.
It runs a series of voluntary, faith-based programs for inmates, and a 2002 review showed that participants in such programs oriented around Christianity have only a 16 percent rate of recidivism.
