The New York Times reports that the Bureau of Prisons has announced it will reconsider its policy regarding the approval of religious texts in the nations’ prisons and will immediately restore the confiscated books back to prisons (except for books deemed obviously to incite violence) until the policy can be reevaluated.
Rather than having a government agency determining what acceptable religious texts are, a sensible alternative would be to have the Bureau of Prisons prohibit any text which is deemed to incite violent or illegal activity. In this way the government would not be seen as “establishing” a particular religion but would be merely enforcing a sensible measure to prevent violence and terrorist recruitment in our nation’s prisons. Religion would no longer be the issue.