Religious Diversity and Rehabilitation in Prisons: Management, Models and Mutations

Abstract

National prison systems differ widely in their ways of striking a balance between the interests of religion and the other factors that shape prison regimes. These other interests include, for example, political pressure to ensure security, good order and the efficient operation of prison functions; the professional interests of prison administrators and officers; competition for the scarce resources to be distributed between different programs of activity; access to space designated for special purposes within prisons; and so on. The argument of this chapter is that recent increases in the level of religious diversity in the prison population of England & Wales pose some interesting challenges to the ways in which religion has been “accommodated” in prison establishments. Indeed, responses to the growth of religious diversity offer an interesting insight into not only the different ways in which prison systems make space for religions (in, for example, the recent development of “community chaplaincy”) but also the variations in their understanding of questions about equality in relation to religion.