Study of prison chaplains sheds light on faith behind bars
Kansas City Star
Updated 11:55 p.m., Friday, May 4, 2012
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Movies and television portray hardened criminals cursing God and everyone else.
In reality, many inmates worship God and practice their faith behind bars.
A recent 50-state survey of chaplains by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life offered a rare look at the worshipers behind bars.
The study said state prisons hold the bulk of the country's convicts (1.4 million), but little has been released to the public on religion in these institutions.
Here are some of the major findings:
Chaplains in state prisons fulfill a range of functions.
Nearly all said they lead worship services, perform religious instruction, do spiritual counseling and organize religious programs. Fifty-seven percent considered the first three their most important functions, but only a third said this is where they spend most of their time.
The chaplains are overwhelmingly Christian (mainly Protestant), male and middle-aged. They also are well-educated, with 62 percent having advanced degrees.
And most like their jobs. Two-thirds said they were very satisfied, and only 6 percent were very or somewhat dissatisfied.
If there seems to be one essential, but challenging, aspect of most prison religion programs, it is in the area of rehabilitating inmates and preparing them for re-entry into society.
More than seven in 10 chaplains considered access to high-quality religion-related prison programs — and support from religious groups after inmates are released — to be “absolutely critical” to successful rehabilitation.
Of chaplains who work in prisons that have rehabilitation or re-entry programs, 57 percent said their quality has improved in the past three years, and 61 percent said participation has increased.
The study gives considerable attention to the topic of religious extremism in prisons.
The researchers explained: “Since the 9/11 terrorism attacks, religious extremism has been a topic of high public interest in the United States. Some experts specifically have raised concerns that prisons could be a breeding ground for home-grown terrorists and have suggested that prison chaplains and other prison administrators need to monitor religious activity more closely.”
Estimates of how common extreme religious views are tend to vary with the security level of the facility and the chaplain's background.
Protestant chaplains were more likely than Catholic or Muslim chaplains to say that religious extremism is either very or somewhat common, and the view was stronger among white evangelical Protestant chaplains than white mainline Protestants.
Nevertheless, 76 percent of chaplains said religious extremism rarely or almost never poses a security threat.
An open-ended question tried to assess what chaplains regarded as extreme. The answers were wide-ranging.
The most common reply was racism disguised as religious dogma, which included racial intolerance or prejudice. This went both ways, as both black and white inmates expressed racial superiority.
Other answers included hostility toward gays and lesbians, negative views of women and intolerance toward sex offenders.
An almost equal number of chaplains said extremism included religious intolerance, such as expressions of religious superiority and attempts to coerce others into their beliefs.
A majority of chaplains said that attempts by inmates to convert other inmates are either very common (31 percent) or somewhat common (43 percent).
It doesn't always work, but the chaplains either said a lot of inmates change religions (26 percent) or some change religion (51 percent). Among those who reported at least some switching, about half said the number of Muslims is growing, followed closely by Protestant Christians and pagan and Earth-based religions.
The chaplains estimated that two-thirds of the inmates in the prisons where they worked were Christians and 5 percent to 9 percent were Muslim, followed by other groups. They said most religious groups have remained relatively stable in size but there was shrinkage of 20 percent among Catholics and 17 percent among the unaffiliated.
However, the researchers cautioned, “Chaplains' perspectives on the religious makeup of inmates may reflect a number of different influences, including their degree of exposure to various groups in the course of their work.”
Requests for religious accommodations, such as religious books or texts and meetings with leaders from inmates' faith, are most always granted. About half of the requests for specific religious diets and religious items or clothing usually are granted but special hairstyles or grooming is mostly denied.
Some chaplains regarded some requests as bogus or extreme, such as seeking raw meat for a Voodoo ritual, said one chaplain. Others said some so-called religious groups were a cover for nonreligious activities, such as gangs that claim to be religious and promote violence.
In reality, many inmates worship God and practice their faith behind bars.
A recent 50-state survey of chaplains by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life offered a rare look at the worshipers behind bars.
The study said state prisons hold the bulk of the country's convicts (1.4 million), but little has been released to the public on religion in these institutions.
Here are some of the major findings:
Nearly all said they lead worship services, perform religious instruction, do spiritual counseling and organize religious programs. Fifty-seven percent considered the first three their most important functions, but only a third said this is where they spend most of their time.
The chaplains are overwhelmingly Christian (mainly Protestant), male and middle-aged. They also are well-educated, with 62 percent having advanced degrees.
And most like their jobs. Two-thirds said they were very satisfied, and only 6 percent were very or somewhat dissatisfied.
More than seven in 10 chaplains considered access to high-quality religion-related prison programs — and support from religious groups after inmates are released — to be “absolutely critical” to successful rehabilitation.
Of chaplains who work in prisons that have rehabilitation or re-entry programs, 57 percent said their quality has improved in the past three years, and 61 percent said participation has increased.
The researchers explained: “Since the 9/11 terrorism attacks, religious extremism has been a topic of high public interest in the United States. Some experts specifically have raised concerns that prisons could be a breeding ground for home-grown terrorists and have suggested that prison chaplains and other prison administrators need to monitor religious activity more closely.”
Estimates of how common extreme religious views are tend to vary with the security level of the facility and the chaplain's background.
Protestant chaplains were more likely than Catholic or Muslim chaplains to say that religious extremism is either very or somewhat common, and the view was stronger among white evangelical Protestant chaplains than white mainline Protestants.
Nevertheless, 76 percent of chaplains said religious extremism rarely or almost never poses a security threat.
An open-ended question tried to assess what chaplains regarded as extreme. The answers were wide-ranging.
The most common reply was racism disguised as religious dogma, which included racial intolerance or prejudice. This went both ways, as both black and white inmates expressed racial superiority.
Other answers included hostility toward gays and lesbians, negative views of women and intolerance toward sex offenders.
An almost equal number of chaplains said extremism included religious intolerance, such as expressions of religious superiority and attempts to coerce others into their beliefs.
It doesn't always work, but the chaplains either said a lot of inmates change religions (26 percent) or some change religion (51 percent). Among those who reported at least some switching, about half said the number of Muslims is growing, followed closely by Protestant Christians and pagan and Earth-based religions.
The chaplains estimated that two-thirds of the inmates in the prisons where they worked were Christians and 5 percent to 9 percent were Muslim, followed by other groups. They said most religious groups have remained relatively stable in size but there was shrinkage of 20 percent among Catholics and 17 percent among the unaffiliated.
However, the researchers cautioned, “Chaplains' perspectives on the religious makeup of inmates may reflect a number of different influences, including their degree of exposure to various groups in the course of their work.”
Some chaplains regarded some requests as bogus or extreme, such as seeking raw meat for a Voodoo ritual, said one chaplain. Others said some so-called religious groups were a cover for nonreligious activities, such as gangs that claim to be religious and promote violence.
Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Study-of-prison-chaplains-sheds-light-on-faith-3535633.php#ixzz1u01ARX7X
On April 25, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy (pictured) signed into law a bill that replaces the death penalty with life without parole. Connecticut is the fifth state in five years, and the 17th overall, to do away with capital punishment. Governor Malloy, who once supported the death penalty, offered the following statement: “My position on the appropriateness of the death penalty in our criminal justice system evolved over a long period of time. As a young man, I was a death penalty supporter. Then I spent years as a prosecutor and pursued dangerous felons in court, including murderers. In the trenches of a criminal courtroom, I learned firsthand that our system of justice is very imperfect. While it’s a good system designed with the highest ideals of our democratic society in mind, like most of human experience, it is subject to the fallibility of those who participate in it. I saw people who were poorly served by their counsel. I saw people wrongly accused or mistakenly identified. I saw discrimination. In bearing witness to those things, I came to believe that doing away with the death penalty was the only way to ensure it would not be unfairly imposed." See more of the governor's statement below.
A new book published in electronic format, The Death Penalty Failed Experiment: From Gary Graham to Troy Davis in Context by Diann Rust-Tierney, examines the problem of arbitrariness in the death penalty since its reinstatement in 1976. Through an analysis of the cases of Gary Graham and Troy Davis, the author argues that race, wealth and geography play a more significant role in determining who faces capital punishment than the facts of the crime itself. Both defendants had significant claims of innocence; both were black defendants who were ultimately executed in the South; in both cases, the victim in the underlying murder was white. Graham was executed in Texas in 2000 and Davis was executed in Georgia in 2011. Rust-Tierney writes, “How do you administer the most severe punishment imaginable in a manner that is accurate, free from bias and demonstrably fair? Until we are all seen and treated as equal, we cannot afford to keep capital punishment.” Ms. Rust-Tierney is an attorney and Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. 
In a recent op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called for the end of the death penalty. President Carter cited the risk of wrongful executions, the lack of evidence of deterrence, and the costs of prosecution as reasons to abolish capital punishment. He wrote, “[T]here has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent. DNA testing and other factors have caused 138 death sentences to be reversed since I left the governor’s office. The cost for prosecuting executed criminals is astronomical. Since 1973, California has spent roughly $4 billion in capital cases leading to only 13 executions, amounting to about $307 million each.” President Carter also cited the unfair application of the death penalty as an especially compelling reason for repeal: “Perhaps the strongest argument against the death penalty is extreme bias against the poor, minorities or those with diminished mental capacity. Although homicide victims are six times more likely to be black rather than white, 77 percent of death penalty cases involve white victims. Also, it is hard to imagine a rich white person going to the death chamber after being defended by expensive lawyers. This demonstrates a higher value placed on the lives of white Americans.” Read full op-ed below.
Commentary from nationally syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne (pictured) and the New York Times reflected on the changing state of the death penalty in the U.S. in light of recent developments. Dionne cited the repeal of the death penalty in Connecticut as an example of a "remarkable pivot in the politics of the death penalty, the premier issue on which an overwhelming consensus favoring what’s taken to be the conservative side has begun to crumble." He observed that "significant groups of libertarian Republicans and opponents of abortion have crossed to the repeal side." In an editorial titled "The Myth of Deterrence," the New York Times noted that "a distinguished committee of scholars working for the National Research Council has now reached the striking and convincing conclusion that all of the research about deterrence and the death penalty done in the past generation . . . should be ignored." The Times concluded that other states should follow Connecticut’s lead in repealing the death penalty. Read full texts below.
