Prisoners are a captive audience with strict limits on information they may have access to. Historically, the shelves of religious books in prisons have been regarded as just the right stuff to tame their souls.But controversy is brewing over the Bureau of Prisons order to chaplains to do a major purge of religious materials in libraries that inmates may use. Its to ensure there is nothing that can be used to give them skills for violence or terrorism or spur them to hateful thoughts. Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times raised attention to the quiet process in a Sept. 10 article. Being removed are books, tapes, CDs and videos that have been on shelves for decades. Whats allowed are materials that are on a selected and acceptable list. The materials are being trashed because they are not on that list of approved and safe materials. Some prisons religious offerings, as a result, are pretty slim. A Christian and an Orthodox Jew were so upset by what was done to the literature at a federal prison camp in upstate New York that they filed a class-action lawsuit, accusing the Bureau of Prisons of violating their rights to the free exercise of religion. Chaplains and others working with prisoners are saying this strategy runs counter to historic arguments that religion-based approaches to confronting social problems aid rehabilitation. But a bureau spokeswoman, Traci Billingsley, said the agency was responding to a 2004 report of the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department on steps prisons should take, in wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups, Goodstein wrote. The effort is called the Standardized Chapel Library Project, to make sure there is no access to whatever might discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize. Billingley said the bureau pushed for consistency of information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts." As one might expect in any step for uniformity, the good and very good go out with any bad. The Times quoted Mark Early, president of Prison Fellowship, Theres no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism. Bureaucrats lack time or patients to read through all the shelved religious books in pursuit of any troubling passages, so they opt to just allow pre-approved books. Experts are said to have produced a list of UP TO 150 book tittles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories.Yet, religious publishing is, perhaps, the largest and most diverse genre. But there is a promise, Billingsley said, to start expanding the offerings in October. Trouble is the bureau has not provided any money to prisons to buy the books on the lists, so in some prisons, after the shelves were cleared of books not on the lists, few items remained.One chaplain was dismayed that things inmates have been studying and reading for 20 years and drawing strength from are gone because they didnt make the list. Other chaplains say what being is brought into libraries are things they are not familiar with or would never have chosen. Eighty of 120 titles of books in Judaism come from the same Orthodox Jewish publishing house. Christians complained of a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism and little from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.An Orthodox Jewish group officer, David Zwiebel, told how three-fourths of Jewish books is one prison library were gone and the collection was decimated. Since when does the government, even with the assistance of chaplains, decide which are the most basic books in terms of religious study and practice? Zwiebel asked.The Sojourners organization, led by Jim Wallis, had this to say, The idea of government bureaucrats drafting a list of approved books on religion seems like something out of Soviet-era Russia, not the United States of America, where freedom of religion even for those behind prison walls is something we treasure.But the government keeps ever busy finding ways for America to be afraid in wake of 9/11, then, of course, moves forward to make us safe. Never mind if any freedoms are lost along the way.

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