Inmates Challenge Ban Of Religious Books in Prisons
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Two inmates challenging a ban on some religious books in chapel libraries at federal prisons are trying to take the fight nationwide, asking that their lawsuit be given class action status so it can benefit thousands of others behind bars.
The inmates, Moshe Milstein, an Orthodox Jew, and John Okon, a Protestant, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday. They had brought a similar lawsuit two months ago but withdrew it after a judge said they needed to register complaints with the prison system first.
The men, held at the federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., about 75 miles northwest of midtown Manhattan, accused the government of the “indiscriminate dismantling of religious libraries” at federal prisons nationwide.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman said in June that prison libraries limited the number of books for each religion to between 100 and 150 under new rules created after an April 2004 Department of Justice review of how prisons choose Muslim religious services providers.
Mr. Feldman said the study was made out of a concern that prisons “had been radicalized by inmates who were practicing or espousing various extreme forms of religion, specifically Islam, which exposed security risks to the prisons and beyond the prisons to the public at large.”
The lawsuit said hundreds and perhaps thousands of religious books and media used by inmates have been banned and removed from prisons across the country since February without any effort to learn if they are inflammatory or extremist.
“This purge is an unnecessary, unconstitutional, and unlawful restriction of the ability of federal inmates nationwide to practice and learn about their religion and has substantially burdened their ability to exercise their religion,” the lawsuit said.
Among the books banned at Otisville were “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, and ‘The Purpose-Driven Life,’ by the Reverend Rick Warren, the lawsuit said.
The Muslim portion of the chapel library has been reduced to the Quran and two other titles after the removal of prayer books, prayer guides, and the Hadith, the most important source for Muslim practice and faith after the Quran, the lawsuit said.
A spokeswoman for government attorneys had no comment yesterday.
