Chapel Library Project

UPDATE (9/27/07)

BOP Agrees to Replace Some of the Books Taken Out of Prison Libraries

On Sept. 26th, the Federal Bureau of Prisons issued a statement to NPR’s Talk of the Nation indicating that it will "alter its planned course of action with respect to the Chapel Library Project."

The Bureau of Prisons said, "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 review of all materials in chapel libraries will be completed by the end of January 2008."

While this is a step in a good direction, the BOP still insists on managing a central list of approved materials. Please ask your members of Congress to let the BOP know that the review should be done at the local level under the discretion of trained library chaplains, not through the use of a central list.

*For talking points and links to contact your representatives, visit Justice Fellowship’s Legislative Action Center here.

ACTION ALERT! (9/19/07)

Religious Books Purged from Prison Libraries
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is implementing a new policy that will severely limit prisoners’ access to religious books. The “Standardized Chapel Library Project” restricts materials for each faith to a list of 150 books selected by the BOP.

The new policy will force chaplains to remove many excellent books that have been donated over the years without any determination that the content is harmful or dangerous. This will limit prisoners’ access to faith based materials, and remove resources helpful to many inmates in their rehabilitation and preparation to return home. Given America's high recidivism rates, this new policy is a step in the wrong direction.

The intent of the BOP policy is laudable: to prevent prisons from becoming breeding grounds of future terrorists. However, the process developed by the BOP for screening out literature that advocates hate, violence, or terrorism is terribly overbroad. Consequently, the new BOP policy will have an unintended but very detrimental affect on prisoners seeking to practice or enrich their faith.

In addition to banning thousands of religious books from chapel libraries, the new BOP policy is troubling for several reasons:

It applies only to materials in chapel libraries, but not to secular prison libraries. It is wrong to have a separate review method for religious materials than for secular materials.
While the BOP has provided a process for adding books to the list, it is cumbersome and will likely take months to secure approval for each item requested. This will make many of the donated materials out of date by the time they are approved.
The policy makes no provision for buying “approved” books to replace the thousands of books that will be removed. In practice the inmates may well have access only to a fraction of the books listed.
Many great books are not included, for example, Prison to Praise by Merlin Carothers, Jesus: The Man Who Lives by Malcolm Muggeridge, and Crossing the Threshold of Hope by Pope John Paul II. Plus, only one of the ten books of "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis made it on the list. This demonstrates the problems with the government preparing any list of “approved” books.

Prison Fellowship suggests that the better solution is to have each chaplain review the items in the chapel library according to standards established by the central office. We are working with the Director of the BOP, Harley Lappin, to try to resolve these concerns. However, the BOP claims that this policy is the result of Congressional concern about the growth of radical Islam in prisons. Prison Fellowship believes that this policy is not what Congress intended, and we hope that you will ask your members of Congress to the BOP know that they don’t agree with this new policy.

*For talking points and links to contact your representatives, visit Justice Fellowship’s Legislative Action Center here.

Resources

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BOP Agrees to Replace Some of the Books Taken Out of Prison Libraries

Resources

BOP Lists of Approved Religious Materials

Responses to the Bureau Policy

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