A military chaplain, the Rev Ronald Apollo, sued the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to be able to practice his religious beliefs and won. BOP wanted all personnel to carry pepper spray, including chaplains, so that if attacked by an inmate they could protect themselves. Apollo challenged the rule and now prison chaplains will no longer have to carry pepper spray. That to some may be just another example of how the Christian right asserts its values on the society, but it is more than that. First of Continue reading “On Religious Freedom”
Tag: the Marshall Project
Private Companies Delivering Public Services
The idea of contracting public services to private companies which operate them at a profit needs to be reevaluated. Several articles have been published recently documenting how they operate. Mother Jones had a long article about private prisons, where a reporter worked as a guard for four months in order to research it. The horrors of that prison in Louisiana shocked me not because of their nature, I had read about them before, but because Continue reading “Private Companies Delivering Public Services”