Table Of ContentBoundaries of Religious Freedom:
Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies 7
Julia Martínez-Ariño
Anne-Laure Zwilling Editors
Religion and
Prison: An
Overview of
Contemporary
Europe
Boundaries of Religious Freedom:
Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies
Volume 7
Series Editors
Lori G. Beaman, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Lene Kühle, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark
Alexander K. Nagel, Institut für Soziologie, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen,
Göttingen, Niedersachsen, Germany
Processes of globalization have resulted in increasingly culturally and religiously
diverse societies. In addition, religion is occupying a more prominent place in the
public sphere at the turn of the 21st Century, despite predictions of religious decline.
The rise in religious diversity, and in the salience of religious identity, is posing both
challenges and opportunities pertaining to issues of governance. Indeed, a series of
tensions have arisen between state and religious actors regarding a variety of matters
including burial rites, religious education and gender equality. Many of these
debates have focused on the need for, and limits of, religious freedom especially in
situations where certain religious practices risk impinging upon the freedom of
others. Moreover, different responses to religious pluralism are often informed by
the relationship between religion and state in each society. Due to the changing
nature of societies, most have needed to define, or redefine, the boundaries of
religious freedom reflected in laws, policies and the design and use of public spaces.
These boundaries, however, continue to be contested, debated and reviewed, at
local, national and global levels of governance. All books published in this Series
have been fully peer-reviewed before final acceptance.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11839
Julia Martínez-Ariño • Anne-Laure Zwilling
Editors
Religion and Prison:
An Overview
of Contemporary Europe
Editors
Julia Martínez-Ariño Anne-Laure Zwilling
Faculty of Theology & Religious Studies UMR 7354 Centre National de la Recherche
University of Groningen Scientifique
Groningen, The Netherlands Strasbourg, France
ISSN 2214-5281 ISSN 2214-529X (electronic)
Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies
ISBN 978-3-030-36833-3 ISBN 978-3-030-36834-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36834-0
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Foreword
Depriving people of their liberty and detaining them in secure locations have long
been practised in human societies. ‘Prison’ is a useful way of referring to these loca-
tions, but the term conceals an astonishing range of variations in the forms and
purposes of detention. The authority to set up and administer most places of deten-
tion has been claimed by the ruling groups of monarchies, tribes, military units
and – in modern times – agencies of the state at local, regional, national or imperial
levels. Nowadays, formal codes of national and international law seek to control
prison systems, but there are still wide variations in how the law is implemented in
prisons. Moreover, the intended purposes of imprisonment encompass different
aspects such as punishment, rehabilitation, therapy, detention on remand, detention
pending resolution of requests for asylum, protection from violence against self and
others, and prevention of threats to life, property and social order. In addition, prison
populations are diverse in terms of, for example, gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality,
religion, social class, nationality, type of offence, type of regime and length of sen-
tence. Any attempt to understand the place of religion in prisons must take this wide
range of variations into account.
At the same time, it is important to recognise that the term religion can have
many different meanings depending on the context. Popular definitions refer to
beliefs in gods, spirits, supernatural forces or – more abstractly – the ‘felt whole’.
Other approaches give priority to particular kinds of emotions, experiences, identi-
ties and relationships with other people and the world of nature. But the lack of
agreement on the meaning of religion is not an insuperable obstacle to understand-
ing what counts as religion – especially in the context of prisons. Indeed, one of the
most important considerations for research on religion in prisons is precisely how
decisions are made and implemented with respect to what is and what is not permis-
sible as religion. This is a recurrent theme in the chapters that follow and is quite
distinct from questions about the so-called real meaning of the term.
Religion features to varying degrees in the everyday life of prisons in virtually all
jurisdictions in the world, but the countries of Europe present a distinctive ‘palette’
of reasons for examining them separately and together. For example, European
countries were among the first to formalise the place of religion in their prisons, but
v
vi Foreword
some of these jurisdictions – notably in Central and Eastern Europe under commu-
nism – also imposed strict limits on the space permitted for religion. Europe also
contains countries that display either significantly high or significantly low levels of
religious affiliation and participation. To complicate matters further, many European
countries now contain growing numbers of immigrants and settled communities
which identify with religions relatively new to Europe. Historically high levels of
migration into and across Europe mainly from parts of Africa, the Middle East and
South Asia have started to transform the religious landscape of countries that had
previously been closely associated with the Catholic Church or the major Protestant
denominations. Moreover, Europe’s burgeoning interest in non-theistic expressions
of spirituality, forms of non-religion and humanistic philosophies adds to the variety
of demands to which prison authorities are expected to respond. Finally, Europe has
crafted a distinctive framework of human rights doctrines and prison rules which
help to shape each country’s ways of accommodating religion in prisons.
In short, religion and prisons are closely interwoven in European countries –
both historically and today. Moreover, the complex patterns of their interweaving
are varied and changing. The forces that drive these patterns arise partly from the
spheres of law, crime, criminal justice and penal policy and partly from the spheres
identified with the religious, the secular and the spiritual. The distinctive ways in
which these spheres are interconnected vary with each country’s particular history
of constitutional settlements and upheavals in politics, law and religion. These his-
tories have shaped the thorny issues that face prisons and religions today.
On the one hand, concern is high about issues such as the expansion of prison
populations, poor prison conditions, increasing rates of recidivism and rising levels
of self-harm and violence among prisoners. On the other hand, there is concern
about rapid increases in religious diversity and religious discrimination, cross-
generational decline in religious affiliation, the questionable capacity of religious
organisations to continue supplying social services in difficult economic circum-
stances, and declining rates of recruitment of religious professionals. If these issues
concerning prisons and religion, taken in isolation, are contentious, it is all the more
necessary to grasp how they collide and intersect inside the walls of prison estab-
lishments. It is no exaggeration to claim that prisons in European societies are
increasingly seen as sites where the place of religion has become highly contentious
but also potentially helpful.
The last three decades have witnessed an impressive increase in scholarly inves-
tigations of precisely how and why the institution of religion in prisons has been
changing in European countries. Indeed, many of the contributors to this volume
have helped forge an effective agenda for research on this topic, in some cases com-
paring prisons with other public institutions. The dominant themes that have
emerged from work in this area are also fully represented in the present volume.
There is extensive overlap between these themes; but they can be grouped for pres-
ent purposes under three headings, as follows.
Foreword vii
Major Themes
(a) Regulatory frameworks
It would be wrong to suggest that each European country has its own national
model of relations between the state and religions which mechanically determines
the place of religion in prisons; but there are undoubtedly political, legal and cul-
tural forces which shape the general ways in which prisons provide for the practice
of religions. European states also vary in the extent to which their management of
religion in prisons conforms to the requirements of international treaties and recom-
mendations such as the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment
of Prisoners1 and the Council of Europe’s Recommendation of the Committee of
Ministers to Member States on the European Prison Rules.2 Moreover, the European
Parliament keeps prison conditions under review.3 In addition, decisions made by
the European Court of Human Rights continue to put further pressure on states to
eliminate structures and practices that are judged to discriminate unfairly against
prisoners’ rights to practise their religion or beliefs. Nevertheless, a strong case can
be made for thinking that the court tends to allow states too much discretion in
deciding how to balance the rights of individual prisoners to freedom of religion or
belief against the needs of states to limit freedom of religion on the grounds of
safety, public order and prison discipline (Temperman 2017).
Indeed, many of the contributions to this volume stress the importance of under-
standing not only the formal frameworks that govern religion in prisons but also the
informal practices whereby prison authorities, chaplains and representatives of reli-
gious organisations can all find themselves caught up in disputes and negotiations
about the freedom of religion as practised at the level of their local prison establish-
ments. This is particularly important in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe
which became fully independent of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. After decades of
Communist repression, these countries started to face the challenge of forging a new
place for religion in public life – including prisons – while trying to preserve a bal-
ance between the power of their revived Christian Orthodox churches and the claims
for recognition advanced by other religious groups.
Before the twenty-first century, questions about the regulation of religions in the
prisons of Europe attracted very little public or political attention, but this situation
changed drastically in the wake of the Islamist-inspired attacks on the USA in 2001
and subsequent attacks in a growing number of European locations. As soon as
journalists and scholars began to draw connections between the violent extremism
1 First adopted in 1957, revised in 2015 and now known as the Nelson Mandela Rules. See https://
cdn.penalreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Joint-statement-Mandela-Rules-PR-
July-18-.pdf
2 First adopted in 2006 and considered for revision in 2017. See https://rm.coe.int/16806f97ab
3 Policy Department C: Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs. Report PE 583.113. 2017. Available
at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/583113/IPOL_BRI%282017%
29583113_EN.pdf
viii Foreword
promulgated by various strands of Islamism and the role of prisons, the spotlight
inevitably fell on notions of how to better regulate all forms of religion which might
encourage violent extremisms among prisoners. Prisons were identified as places
that might help to foment this ideology, to spread it through networks of serving and
released prisoners, and to foster the conversion of non-Muslims to extremist ver-
sions of Islam. The prison systems in European countries have responded in differ-
ent ways to this ‘securitisation of Islam’ by, for example, enhancing the training of
security staff, the scrutiny of imams working in prisons, and the surveillance of
Muslim prisoners’ activities. Some countries have put in place, or strengthened, a
formal apparatus for attracting, selecting, training and monitoring Muslim ‘chap-
lains’ or other representatives of Islam who visit prisoners.
(b) The framing of religion and religious diversity
A second major theme that runs through most of the chapters in this important
book concerns the wide range of strategies adopted by prison authorities for deter-
mining two crucial things: the question of what counts as religion for practical pur-
poses and the question of how far to acknowledge the diversity of religions. These
questions carry greater weight in prisons than in the rest of society because prisons
are spaces where virtually all activities, facilities and material things are subject to
close inspection and explicit regulations.
A wide variety of organisations have an interest in how religion is defined in
prisons. Religious organisations are active in seeking to defend their members’
rights to hold their particular beliefs and to conduct such practices as individual or
collective worship, prayer, study and festivals. Prisoners’ rights to wear certain
forms of clothing, to practise distinctive forms of personal hygiene, to consume
particular types of food, to meet with representatives of their religious tradition, and
to have access to appropriate kinds of religious literature are all subject to negotia-
tion at various levels of prison systems. This negotiation might take the form of
angry confrontations between prisoners and prison guards in the course of everyday
interactions. But it can also take place at the highest levels of prison governance
where administrators, selected religious representatives and even government offi-
cials try to decide, in principle, where the dividing line should fall between religion
and non-religion or between permissible and impermissible forms of religion.
Points of contention often centre on the extent to which the rights in question are
soundly rooted in – and mandated by – clearly identifiable and authentic religious
traditions. Other contentious issues concern the selection of organisations that are
accepted as truly representative of their faith traditions – and of the many sub-
traditions within them.
Yet more questions about the management of religion’s boundaries come into
focus when discussion centres on the conditions governing access to prisons and
prisoners by authorised representatives of religions. These agents include salaried
and voluntary chaplains, volunteers, teachers and spiritual assistants. Difficult ques-
tions about their selection, appointment, training, monitoring, evaluation, remuner-
ation, status, authority and access to prisoners are refracted by the history and
structure of each prison system. Other issues concern whether these various agents
Foreword ix
are permitted to interact with prisoners who do not share their own religious iden-
tity, whether any form of proselytism is permitted, and whether they allegedly incite
prisoners to adopt any kind of radicalism or violent extremism. The material condi-
tions in which these religious agents have to work also vary widely between coun-
tries – especially with regard to the spaces available for collective worship.
All these concerns about the governance of religion in prisons are heightened in
contexts where religious diversity is increasing significantly among prisoners – as
in many European countries since the 1990s. The growing presence of prisoners
who identify with religious traditions and sub-traditions previously unknown or
unfamiliar in Europe gives rise to questions about, for example, the place of
Christian churches which had previously been dominant, the recognition as ‘reli-
gion’ of beliefs and practices which appear to be spiritual rather than religious, and
the frequency of conversion or reversion from one religious identity to another. In
turn, these questions generate moral and legal arguments about equal rights and
unfair discrimination in relation to religion in prisons – as well as fundamental
objections to what can be seen as the privileging of either one religion over others
or of religion over non-religion. In all these respects, prisons represent a microcosm
of the European societies in which they function.
(c) Changing forms of religion in prison
The chapters that follow are eloquent testimony to the shifting balance that is
being struck in various ways in European prisons between, on the one hand, long-
established and, on the other hand, more recently adopted expressions of religious
and spiritual beliefs. In this sense, prisons are no different from other social institu-
tions insofar as they reflect continuing changes in how religions, spiritual beliefs
and forms of non-religion are being expressed in thought, feeling and practice. The
ascendancy of major Christian churches and denominations is declining in many
European countries – but not at the same rate in all places – and rates of self-
identification with religions other than Christianity and with various forms of non-
religion are on the increase. Furthermore, a wide range of spiritual beliefs and
therapies which draw their inspiration from many parts of the world, without neces-
sarily having links to particular religious traditions, have also been attracting
increasing numbers of practitioners and clients in recent decades. Many of them are
associated with the so-called New Age and new technologies of the self.
All these changing forms of religion and spirituality are reflected in the collec-
tive life of prisons and of individual prisoners. As a result, prison systems are under
pressure to recognise ideas and activities which do not fit easily into long- established
frameworks of predominantly Christian chaplaincy. Even in countries where
arrangements for collective worship in prisons are fully integrated into routine pro-
grammes, it can be difficult to provide times and places for ‘alternative’ spiritual
practices which may require the presence of teachers or practitioners rather than
pastors, priests or imams. Moreover, the circulation of print and digital media is
central to the practice of alternative spiritual beliefs among prisoners but may be
more resistant to control by chaplains or other appointed representatives of religions.
