According to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, prison inmates “with a known nexus to international or domestic terrorism” are leading worship services in some federal prisons. It seems there is a shortage of approved chaplains, according to the report released Wednesday.
At one U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facility, an “al-Qaeda affiliated inmate, who was convicted on terrorism charges, was permitted to lead services on a frequent basis.”
The chaplain there said the inmate was chosen by other prisoners “due to his extensive faith knowledge and Arabic fluency.”
Oh great, it’s in Arabic so no one knows what he’s saying.
Mr. Horowitz‘s audit also found that “terrorist inmates” at one facility had led worship services, even though a BOP-contracted “faith contractor” was on the payroll.
The inspector general found two other facilities where inmates with connections to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, or the al-Shabab terrorist group, were allowed to lead worship services. One of the terrorist-connected inmates did so “on a regular basis,” the report stated.
In his report, Mr. Horowitz notes that there are only 236 chaplains to serve more than 160,000 federal inmates and that two-thirds of U.S. Bureau of Prison facilities are not meeting staffing minimums, forcing some prisons to turn to “alternatives that pose enhanced risks.”
Mr. Horowitz said his office “found a lack of diversity” in the BOP’s chaplain corps: 84% of chaplains are Protestants, although only 34% of inmates identify as such. He said “at least 16 faith groups” had no chaplains serving BOP facilities, and that Catholic and Muslim clergy “were substantially underrepresented” in the prison bureau.
This is the typical insanity we see in America today.
2021-07-07 by MaurA Dowling on Scribd
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