The case of New York’s embattled jailhouse imam, Umar Abdul-Jalil, is causing some to call into question the existence and size of the city’s prison chaplain program, which costs taxpayers more than $1 million a year.

As top city officials decide whether to fire Abdul-Jalil for his remarks to a conference of Muslim students last year, the case has raised questions about the city’s use of taxpayer funds to provide chaplains for inmates in municipal jails. The city’s Department of Correction employs 21 full-time and 19 part-time chaplains from the Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths.

Critics have suggested that the city’s employment of clergy is a misuse of taxpayer dollars when other major municipalities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, rely on volunteer chaplains to serve their inmates. The city, which has employed clergy in its jails for decades, says a volunteer-based program would not work for the around-the-clock needs of its jail system.

The city’s reliance on paid chaplains is an indication that its program has grown too big, the Republican leader in the City Council, James Oddo, said. “It seems that the chaplain program has gone the way of any other government program. It keeps growing over time,” Mr. Oddo said. He said he was shocked to learn the cost of the chaplains was now in the millions of dollars. “If there’s a way to provide these services on a volunteer basis, I think that’s a conversation we should have.”

The paid chaplain division has drawn increased scrutiny after Abdul-Jalil was suspended last week while the city investigates whether his fiery comments warrant his dismissal.

At a conference in April 2005, Abdul-Jalil said the “greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House” and urged Muslims in America to “stop letting the Zionists of the media dictate what Islam is to us.” The imam also said that Muslims were tortured in a city jail.

Abdul-Jalil has retained a prominent civil liberties attorney, Norman Siegel, to represent him as he argues that his comments are protected speech under the First Amendment.

A Washington-based group, Americans for the Separation of Church and State, said the city might have avoided the situation had it used volunteer chaplains instead of those on government payroll. “Government funding for prison chaplains puts the state in the awkward position of being forced to pick and choose among religions,” a spokesman for the group, Robert Boston, said. “A system of privately funded volunteers from a variety of denominations would make more sense.”

“A volunteer system would also prevent the government from being held responsible for inflammatory or insensitive comments made by any chaplains,” Mr. Boston said.

The city program also drew criticism from the chairman of the New York Libertarian Party, John Clifton, who said the city should “reconsider if there are better ways to do this.”

While the Federal Bureau of Prisons uses a combination of paid and volunteer chaplains, New York’s program differs from other major American counties with sizable inmate populations, which rely on volunteer clergy to minister to inmates.

In Los Angeles County, which at 21,000 inmates has the nation’s largest municipal prison system, chaplains provide ministerial services entirely on a volunteer basis, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, Steve Whitmore, said. The same is true for about 9,000 inmates in Cook County, Ill., which serves Chicago.

New York City, meanwhile, allocates $879,395 a year to pay the salaries of its 21 full-time chaplains, according to the mayor’s preliminary budget. That does not include the costs of benefits such as health care or pensions, nor the compensation for part-time chaplains and administrators such as Abdul-Jalil, who made $76,602 as the department’s director of ministerial services.

The city has a long history of directly employing chaplains for its inmates, a spokesman for the corrections department, Thomas Antenen, said. In 1972, the city had four full-time and 28 part-time chaplains. The focus shifted to full-time chaplains, however, after a series of riots in city jails led to suggestions that a greater clergy presence could help soothe tensions among inmates, Mr. Antenen said.

Mr. Antenen defended the city’s use of paid chaplains, citing the military as a government program that does the same. Having chaplains on the payroll gives the city more control than it would have if it relied on religious groups to provide volunteer clergy, he said. “Because they become an employee of the city, we have the ability to choose who we employ,” Mr. Antenen said, adding that by law, the city must provide inmates with access to religious services.

The Department of Correction’s chaplains provide a “multitude” of tasks beyond simply leading weekly services, Mr. Antenen said, including assisting staff members, counseling inmates, leading holiday services for the various faiths, and notifying the next of kin when an inmate dies in prison.

In short, the city has a “24/7” need for its chaplains, which a volunteer program could not easily accommodate. “It’s a pot that always boils,” Mr. Antenen said. “It doesn’t stop. We need them when we need them.”