US Commission on Civil Rights releases updated report on “Enforcing Religious Freedom in Prisons”

As detailed in this press release, earlier this month the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights releases this new report, “Enforcing Religious Freedom in Prisons,” which serves as an update to the Commission’s 2008 report of the same name.  As explained here, the “purpose of this update is to evaluate how incarcerated individuals can exercise their religious freedoms, as well as assess how the religious composition of prisoners and court interpretations of RLUIPA claims may have changed since 2007.”  The final paragraph of this report’s executive summary provide an additional overview of its coverage:

This report is broken down into three chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the legal foundation of prisoners’ religious exercise rights, religion’s role and practice in prison, and the changing religious landscape of the United States.  The chapter ends with an introduction to the procedures prisons and jails use to address prisoners’ grievances.  Chapter 2 provides an analysis of the information the Commission collected through formal interrogatory and document requests from a sample of 20 carceral facilities around the country.  The sample includes eight federal institutions, 10 state institutions, and two county jails.  However, it is important to note that two state facilities did not respond to the Commission’s interrogatories and neither of the local jails responded to the Commission’s request.  The lack of response from these institutions demonstrates one of the many barriers researchers encounter in obtaining information about the protection of prisoners’ civil rights.  Chapter 2 also provides a summary of the grievances related to religious discrimination in prisons filed with the Commission.  The chapter closes with a discussion of the impact of COVID-19 and its continuing legacy on prisoners’ ability to exercise their religious liberties.  Chapter 3 concludes the report with an analysis of 843 reported RLUIPA cases decided from 2017-2023, examining trends by religion, judicial circuit, type of accommodation requests, and court dispositions.