Religious Freedom in Prison - Research Paper Example

Yudi Yang ENGL-1213-05 Gantz Persuasive Research Paper March 13, Religious Freedom in Prison Prison inmates should be allowed to freely practice religion in prison because this can help them in exercising their constitutional right, obtaining a direction in their life, changing their self-concept, changing their behavior, attaining a secure environment, achieving social support and reaching particular resources. Prison’ are commonly referred to correction center and, as a result, inmates are required to be corrected rather than being denied their human rights. Like any other human being, inmates have a right to worship, and more importantly they need religious freedom even when they are in the prison environment. Denial of religious freedom may hinder inmates to access moral compass that may have guided them away from the criminal lifestyle. Recently, there has been applauding of some religious programming to due to increasing need for rehabilitation among inmates. Among the supporters of this religion –based programs are prison’s policy makers and prison officials. The primary purpose of this paper is to describe religious freedom in prison by keenly analyzing hindrances of freedom of religion, benefits of allowing inmates to practice religious freedom as an individual and to the society as a whole. In addition, there will be an analysis of the constitutional human rights. Disadvantages Initially, almost every prison in the world, inmates are subjected to discrimination to religious freedom. Policies that are implemented in jails and freedom are designed in such a way that the rights of the individual are not respected. In US, over two million Americans were denied their freedom to exercise their faith. This means that around two million individuals are denied an opportunity to change their lifestyle from a religious point of view. Some researchers argue that religious freedom in prison should not be permitted as sometimes it brings unnecessary discrimination between inmates which causes murders or unfair treatment. Correction centers comprise of prisoners of the different religion. For instance, In the US, there are various religion among inmates including; Christianity, Islamic, Judaism, among others. This means that if the religious freedom of every offender is to be respected, there should be religious structures and unions for quite a number in every prison. Failure to honor religious freedom of inmates can cause humanitarian and other human rights organization to file up cases against any prison department that goes against human rights. On the other hand, if they are given freedom inmates tend to discriminate each other on the basis of religion. For example, one may find Christian prisoners going against every non-Christian inmate may recommend. Nevertheless, every individual has a right to worship whether one is in prison or not. Any form of religion discrimination is not acceptable by law. Inmates who are found dealing any discrimination are punished by law, and if need be, their serving term may be extended (Larkin 209).Although very stiff policies are instituted in correction agencies to mitigate this discrimination, some inmates still practice it. However, the benefits of freedom of religion in correction centers outnumber the disadvantages. These benefits range from personal benefits, prisons officials benefits as well as society benefits. Although it sounds odd in mentioning community in the context of region and prisoners, there is no doubt that society is also a beneficiary of freedom of religion in prison.Societies have for a long time been a victim of criminals after the end of their sentence. After the end of the sentence of an inmate, an inmate is taken back to the society where he continue with his or her normal life as before.If the inmate happens to have been efficient rehabilitated by use of a religion-based approach, the society will receive a changed individual. Advantages Religion has significantly influenced treatment of inmates in correction centers. For years, churches have been among the religion institutions willing to provide sanctuary to the offenders. Fundamentally, the establishment of religious activities in correction centers was to allow inmates to obtain reparation for their crime, get converted as still under isolations as well as amending their criminal life. Some inmates were even turned into correctional chaplain and used to provide counseling and education for inmates. Correctional Chaplain was among the few the few paid non-staff for providing counseling and education to the other inmates. Currently, inmates have freedom of practicing religion within the religion structure as well as on an individual level. Religious programs have become very significant in prisons and jails in the correction of inmates. Recent studies show that one in every three prisoners is participating in religious programs during a religious function in prison or jail. In most correction centers worldwide, inmates tend to receive unfair treatment from their inmates, prison’s staffs, as well as prison wardens in the course of their stay. Some inmates are even physically beaten and sexually harassed to an extent that some end up losing their lives or get infected by dangerous diseases like HIV/AIDs, STIs among others. In addition, jail or prison environment is not a conducive environment for the human being. Forced labor, poor nutrition, emotional torture are among the hardships and challenges a significant number of inmates suffer from during the course of their imprisonment. Most offenders consider churches, mosques among other religion structures as the only place where they experience freedom. Additionally, most religious institutions supply reading materials and scriptures and organize worship programs for offenders. Recently, there has been increased missionary activity in prisons to ensure that every inmate is given freedom of religion. Offenders are given directions and assisted to identify the actual meaning of one’s life (Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 273).Additionally, religion has played a crucial role in helping inmates deal with their emotional strains of incarceration. One of the most painful feelings to an inmate is dissonance. Quite a significant number of prisoners are very bitter to towards the world because they are being incarcerated. In such situations, religion has held possible routes out of the dilemma of bitterness by ensuring the inmates focuses on their future. There are various ways in which religion ease incarceration pain. One of the most efficient ways is by helping inmates deal with guilt. Majority of the prisoners turn to religion for relief from guilt. Although, a significant number of prisoners may have committed some offenses intentionally, in one way or another, they suffer from guilt conscious. It is very hard for every individual to have an exculpatory acceptance of loss of freedom. In addition, prisoners find it relatively challenging in identifying a new way of life. Adapting to prison’s way of life is quite difficult especially for individuals who feel they were mistakenly accused of committing a crime they had not committed. In such situations, prisoners genuinely commit themselves to religious living. Spiritual life ease inmate’s adaptation as they neither do they find themselves on the wrong hand of the law nor of their partners or other prisoners. Moreover, religion helps inmates to deal with the loss and mostly loss of freedom. Every human being struggles to come out from a loss situation. There is no doubt; freedom is essential. Losing any form of liberty is sometimes equivalent to losing life. Some individuals are deprived to an extent that they commit suicide. Inmate may be required to forget every loss including loss of freedom o have a sense of peace (Beckford and Gilliat 213). Freedom of religion is also crucial in assisting inmates with imprisonment deprivation. Religion neutralizes the harsh environment of the jails or prisons. Lacks of material comfort, lack of safety among any other form of harshness surrounding prison are ameliorated by religion programs and religion activities. Prisons have imported all sorts of cultures from the world. In addition, prisons comprised all kinds of criminals including people who were accused of rape, murder, armed robbers among others. Therefore, majority of inmates tend to accompany themselves on their ordinary way of life to prison. This mixture of behaviors creates an extremely dangerous environment for every inmate including the criminals themselves. For this reason, majority of prisoners avoid this danger by linking themselves closely to religion. Additionally, inmates participating in religious activities get access to outsiders. Due to high rise of the prison break up, inmates are carefully monitored to ensure that no suspicious activity is being carried out between them and their visitors. As a result, access to outsiders very rare to prisoners as prison officials opt to cut off frequent visitors than to enhance their security systems. Therefore, prisoners consider interaction with outsiders paramount in their day to day prison lives. Participants of religious activities frequently get access to outsiders due to religious programs and missionary programs. Some inmates receive special treatment by the outsiders. For instance, some receive enough food, money, although it is illegal to give money to an inmate among other benefits. In addition, some religious participants get paid some wages from performing religious activities. To tolerate prison life, inmates have to identify some way of surviving in prison. One of those ways is material comfort. Material comforts can be informed of money through payments or wages generated from activities in prison. These earnings made from religious participation helps inmates in paying for chips, soft drinks among another material comfort (Clear, Stout, and Dammer 67). Religion freedom in prison has promoted behavioral change for inmates. Majority of criminals have never accessed any religion structure in their entire life. Some have been pagans from childhood while others have never accessed any inspiration from religion. In other cases, some inmates were brought up from immoral backgrounds. In the prison environment, some inmates who may have never accessed religion gets inspired, by the way, religious inmates are handling their issues and how committed they are to religion. As a result, some inmates change their behaviors and become committed to religion. In addition, participants of religion activities get access to prison resources. Prison officials and other prison staffs extremely high levels of trust to religious offenders. In an event of need, they are allowed to use prison resources. For instance, Chaplains are permitted to use prison’s public address every time they are educating other inmates; they are also allocated prison’s time considering the busy schedules available in the prison. In addition, chaplains are also exempted from forced labor. Because most of the time these religious inmates are either preparing for presentations or they are training other prisoners, they rarely participate in hard jobs. In other words, religious inmates are given special consideration when it comes to the usage of prison resources (Sullivan 250).In addition, freedom of religion in prison has significantly affected prison officials and other prison staff. Most prison officials including cooks, wardens among other staffs spend most of their lives in the prison environment. Despite the fact that they are being paid for what they do, sometimes they do no get adequate time to commit their lives to religion. Therefore, in most cases, they tend to act against what they are required to do. For instance, there are various corruption cases in correction centers, unfair treatment of offenders, racial discrimination among other social injustices. To some extent, these injustices are significantly reduced by religion in prison. Prison officers may find it relatively challenging discriminating a religious inmate on the basis of religion or even taking a bribe in a situation where a religious inmate may be in need of some prison resources for a religious activity. Moreover, some prison officials as well as wardens end up being committed to religion (Larson, Johnson and Pitts 40). It is evident that prisoners who get involved in religions gain meaning of one’s life and right direction. There are various instances where criminal go to prison but by the time there are through with their sentence, they are changed individuals. During the hardships that are experienced in prison and the duration spent in a prison environment inmates get adequate time to analyze their lives and more importantly their future. Inmates are offered opportunities to rediscover their goals and objectives in life. During this self- assessment, majority of inmates realize their potentials while in prisons and life after jail. As a result, they develop a right attitude towards religion and to fellow inmates. Additionally, freedom of religion has enabled some religious participant to meet volunteers. During religious functions, inmates get access to all kind of individuals including senior personnel who may have attended such a religious activity. Some inmates get sponsored with good lawyers and assisted to file appeals, others volunteers may offer to provide support to the prisoners’ family among other support. Essentially, religion has been associated with a variety of benefits to the inmates, prison as well as the society as a whole (Keuther 260). Study shows that prison officers have an easy moment monitoring the activities of religious inmates or offenders compared to ordinary prisoners. For this reason, most correction agencies choose to rehabilitate offenders using faith-based model or religion based model. In addition, religion based rehabilitation model is also cost effective in terms facilitation. Most faith -based facilitation are conducted by Chaplains or other empowered inmates and, as a result, facilitation cost is significantly cut off. In other cases, facilitation may be performed by a religious leader. For instance, there was a faith and character based rehabilitation initiative in Indiana and Florida. The initiative was designed to rehabilitate inmates by using faith to change their way of lives and to discourage future criminals in conducting further illegal activities (Hardyman, Clear and Stout 66).It is important to note that there are also other elements that have significantly contributed to this extreme number of inmates being affected by religion. Amongst these factors include safety. Some prisoners join religious groups just like any other prison group. In modern prisons, inmates join to form gangs that support each other in conducting criminal activities within the jail. Majority of these are groups racial-based. Therefore, quite a significant number consider religious groups as the only group that does not discriminate as long as the offenders share the same faith (Larson, Johnson and Pitts 34). Additionally, since religious groups are based on faith, correction agencies take extra efforts in protecting them contrary to any other prison group. For this reason, religious groups remain to be the safest group in correction centers. In recap, we can conclude that freedom of religion has significantly influenced correction agencies in terms of discipline, self-realization of inmates, control and discipline among other forms of rehabilitation. Both the correction agencies and prisoners have something positive to describe religion. In this paper, there is a scrutiny of both the disadvantages and advantages of having religious freedom in prisons. For the con, the was a mention of how religion can lead to religious discrimination which can lead to religious war. Although it is relatively challenging to determine or judge the reason behind an inmate joining a religious group, it is believed that most prisoners join religion groups for practical and personal reasons. Practical reasons may include the need for protection, among other requirements. On the other hand, personal reasons may include self – realization, access to volunteers among others. In addition, there is an analysis of the benefits that accrue to inmates being given the freedom of religion. These advantages have been analyzed from the side of the society, inmate themselves as well as correctional centers. Therefore, freedom of religion in prisons is crucial to correction’s officials, prisoners as well the community as a whole. Works Cited Beckford, James A and Sophie Gilliat. Religion in Prison: Equal Rites in a Multi-Faith Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Clear, Todd R, et al. Does Involvement in Religion Help Prisoners Adjust to Prison? San Francisco, California: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1992. Document. Hardyman, Patricia L., et al. "The Value of Religion in Prison an Inmate Perspective." Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice (2000): 53-74. Document. Keuther, C F. Religion and the chaplain. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951. Book. Larkin, Barbara. International Religious Freedom (2000): Report to Congress by the Department. New York: DIANE Publishing, 2001. Book. Larson, David B, Byron R Johnson and Timothy C Pitts. "Religious Programs, Institutional Adjustment and Recidivism among Former Inmates in Prison Fellowship Programs." JUSTICE QUARTERLY (1997): 23-45. Document. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, 2004. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 2005. Book. Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers. Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution. New York: Princeton University Press, 2009. Book. Read More