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April 10, 2006
From the WTF Files
I used to believe that going to prison meant that society was punishing criminals. That involved denying them rights and freedoms that the rest of us enjoy.
Over the years, the judiciary, in a display of arrogance and idiocy perhaps unrivaled in human history, has set out to make prison a place where killers, rapists and child molesters lack one thing, and one thing only: the ability to go home.
Did you know that "prison overcrowding," as defined by Federal appellate courts has forced the release of inmates, because judges have decreed that prisoners are entitled to more room than members of the U.S. military? It's true; the square-foot-per-man ratio aboard a submarine would be considered a constitutional violation in a U.S. prison.
In some states, judges have ruled that inmates can have conjugal visits.
It's also considered a violation of prisoners' rights to interfere with their religious practices, including their dietary requirements.
From the black-robed morons of the Massachusetts judiciary comes this.
BOSTON - The state’s highest court has ruled that the state prison system has failed to justify denying a Muslim inmate special feast-day meats, such as oxen and camel.
In a unanimous ruling Friday, the Supreme Judicial Court said officials at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center had failed to show why providing the proper meats to Rashad Rasheed on certain holidays was a burden.
The decision reversed a Superior Court judge who dismissed Rasheed’s claim without a trial. The case now goes back to Superior Court for review.
The SJC ruling noted that the state Constitution goes further than the U.S. Constitution to protect the religious freedom of prisoners, The Boston Globe reported.
Justice Robert Cordy, writing for the court, said the Massachusetts Constitution is “more protective of the religious freedoms of prisoners than the United States Constitution, and ... the proper standard of review to be applied to the infringement of such freedoms is consequently more demanding.”
Rasheed, a practicing member of the Nation of Islam, has been serving a life sentence since 1975. A Department of Correction spokeswoman, Diane Wiffin, would not disclose why Rasheed was in prison and his lawyer, Neil McGaraghan, said he didn’t know why.
Rasheed sued in 2000 after the state signed a contract with a new food vendor that began providing lamb and fish to Muslim prisoners on two Islamic holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Rasheed said the meals were inappropriate.
On the first holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan, Rasheed’s faith requires that he eat the meat of cows, oxen, or camels. On the second holiday, which celebrates the pilgrimage to Mecca, he is required to eat specially slaughtered cattle.
McGaraghan applauded the ruling, saying it was the first time the SJC has said that inmates are entitled to the same religious protections as free people in Massachusetts.
“It recognizes the long history of the importance of religion in the Commonwealth,” he said. “Dating back hundreds of years, religion has been recognized to be one of those core fundamental rights worth enshrining in the Declaration of Rights and specifically extended to inmates.”
[...]
Rasheed’s claim charged prison officials with violating his right to practice his Muslim faith in a variety of ways, including limiting the meals, forbidding him from using a bulky prayer rug and restricting him to an ounce of scented prayer every three months.
I have a hard time believing that the Massachusetts Constitution requires this kind of deference to the spiritual needs of its prisoners.
I don't care that he's a Muslim; it's the idea that prisoners have the right to force their religious requirements upon their jailers, that free exercise of religion includes catering -- literally -- to the requirements of their faith, that puts a frown on my puss.
Anything beyond prayer books ought to be verboten to inmates; they can read the Word and nurture their souls. But special food? Kosher, halal, whatever. We ought to be following the lead of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who feeds his inmates bologna and cheese sandwiches, and houses them in tents in the Arizona desert.
Camel? Oxen? Sure, just so long as it's Oscar Meyer camel-bologna on stale white bread.
Posted by Mike Lief at April 10, 2006 12:36 AM
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Comments
Actually, if you're going to rail on anyone for conjugal visits, at least in the great state of California, the proper target would be the legislature.
The 'family' (conjugal) visits afforded prisoners are not, as far as I'm aware, judicial constructs, but are actually codified at 15 CCR 3177 (and are, in at least a passing nod to sanity, denied to sex offenders, violent offenders, basically all lifers, the condemned, and practitioners of domestic violence (Mexican or otherwise).
Posted by: Chris at April 10, 2006 11:18 AM
Chris,
A fair point, one that I should have acknowledged when pounding out my post.
But my larger point remains: that it's the judiciary that continually distorts what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment," as well as deciding that prison inmates have rights that are in direct conflict with the need to maintain control of the prisons.
The latest idiocy is the courts forcing the L.A. County Sheriff to stop segregating the inmates by race -- a move necessitated by the race riots of this past fall.
Query: Would most inmates prefer separate-but-equal-yet-safe prison housing, or living in the integrated-but-stabbed-with-homemade-toothbrush-shivs-by-rival-racial-gangs cell blocks?
Posted by: Mike Lief at April 10, 2006 11:46 AM
Agreed re: the courts. When SCOTUS came down with their forced deseg of CDC(R), I choked.
I'm reasonably sure -- with the caveat of not having ever been a guest of such an establishment -- that, unlike public schools, there's no appreciable difference between two whites serving time on D-yard Unit 515 Cell 12 and two Surenos in Cell 13, or even on D-yard Unit 514, or even on C-yard, or ... I mean, it's not like one cellblock gets shiny new Macintosh computers and cafeteria food from Wolfgang Puck, and the other does without....
Maybe Souter would like to spend some time in Wasco or Delano? (I cried a solemn and bitter tear when his family home was saved from eminent domain.)
Posted by: Chris at April 10, 2006 12:14 PM