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screamingflea
3-3-11, 5:51pm
Sorry, but this (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_rastafarian_segregation) sounds completely screwy to me.

Rastafarian and other Virginia inmates who refuse to cut their hair have been moved to a maximum security prison as corrections officials continue trying to get them to comply with the state's grooming policy.
In November, the Department of Corrections moved more than 30 prisoners who were out of compliance with the policy to Keen Mountain Correctional Center. Several of the inmates had spent more than a decade in solitary confinement for refusing to cut their hair.
Department spokesman Larry Traylor says the inmates have been moved to Wallens Ridge State Prison in far southwest Virginia.
The inmates are allowed increased privileges for working through a program, with the ultimate goal of cutting their hair or beards. Some have chosen instead to return to segregation.

In my extremely limited understanding of prison religion, there is a list of "recognized" religions that merit official accommodation. It may be that Rastafarianism doesn't make the list, but isn't a solid relationship with one's Higher Power supposed to be a gold mine for rehabilitation? I'd be curious to know more about the "other inmates" who refuse to cut their hair - are they Sikhs perhaps? Or some other religious denomination not officially sanctioned by the prison system? If these guys feel strongly enough about it to volunteer for a decade in solitary confinement it can't be just about the fashion statement or exploiting a legal loophole.

I know that rules are rules, especially in such a highly structured environment. But in a time when many prison systems around the country are releasing inmates for lack of resources why are they tying up bed space intended for the higher risk prisoners? If they weren't incarcerated in maximum security in the first place it would seem that they're lower risk, so wouldn't it make more sense to resolve the issue another way?

More to the point, if these presumably lower-risk inmates are displacing the murderers et al, where do these higher-risk people go? And for the long-haired inmates taking up space in solitary, what happens when other inmates need to be punished for something real like assaulting a guard and they have no place to use for that? I can't imagine they get to trade places with the Rastas at Club Fed.

Or for that matter, why don't they just hold the Rastas down and clip them by force? I'm not advocating it, but it seems a lot simpler than tying up all these resources. The whole thing seems like a totally disproportionate response to a simple problem.

Edit: For some reason when I went back and clicked on the above link it brought up a different article that answered some of my questions. But not all of them. ;-)

Crystal
3-3-11, 5:54pm
The goal of prison is not rehabilitation, but punishment. This fits. Not right, but ....

screamingflea
3-3-11, 7:04pm
I think both goals apply. It just depends on who's in office in any given district at any given election cycle.

bae
3-3-11, 7:42pm
There may be a safety issue involved with long, thick, braided/matted hair. It would be very easy to conceal weapons in such hair, and difficult to search safely.

Perhaps they are thinking of the safety of the corrections officers and the other prisoners?

iris lily
3-3-11, 9:36pm
See, I thought about that, too.

peggy
3-3-11, 10:13pm
I say cut their hair. Prison is a loss of rights we citizens enjoy. That's the point, right? It's punishment for crimes. Cut their hair if it poses a problem. Unless their religion can reasonably justify having long, matted hair other than 'we have always had long hair, us in this religion', cut it. If these guys didn't want to be in prison with it's understandably strict rules, well, then, they shouldn't have committed the crime.

ApatheticNoMore
3-4-11, 12:18am
By some theories of justice they are in prison to be punished. Punishment theory if taken far enough can be used to justify no end of absolutely inhuman prison conditions, and I have no doubt that those exist. Although no personally I don't see cutting one's hair as particularly cruel.

The theory I tend to more readily accept is that they are in prison in order to protect the rest of society from them (for violent criminals anyway). That is all. And so prison doesn't need to be a torture chamber, it merely needs to separate them from us and again I am talking violent criminals (neither does it need to be a first class resort of course, but I think we more often lean toward torture chamber). Of course if weapons are likely to be hid in their hair you can justify a haircut for that same reason.

loosechickens
3-4-11, 12:29am
Having little familiarity with the Rastafarian religion, I went to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastafari_movement

excerpt regarding their "locks":

The wearing of dreadlocks is very closely associated with the movement, though not universal among, or exclusive to, its adherents. Rastas maintain that locks are supported by Leviticus 21:5 ("They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in the flesh.") and the Nazirite vow in Numbers 6:5 ("All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.").

It has often been suggested (e.g., Campbell 1985) that the first Rasta locks were copied from Kenya in 1953, when images of the independence struggle of the feared mau mau insurgents, who grew their "dreaded locks" while hiding in the mountains, appeared in newsreels and other publications that reached Jamaica. However, a more recent study by Barry Chevannes[31] has traced the first Hairlocked Rastas to a subgroup first appearing in 1949, known as Youth Black Faith.


Man with thick locks.There have been ascetic groups within a variety of world faiths that have at times worn similarly matted hair. In addition to the Nazirites of Judaism and the sadhus of Hinduism, it is worn among some sects of Sufi Islam, notably the Baye Fall sect of Mourides,[32] and by some Ethiopian Orthodox monks in Christianity,[33] among others. Some of the very earliest Christians may also have worn this hairstyle; particularly noteworthy are descriptions of James the Just, "brother of Jesus" and first Bishop of Jerusalem, whom Hegesippus (according to Eusebius[34] and Jerome) described as a Nazirite who never once cut his hair. The length of a Rasta's locks is a measure of wisdom, maturity, and knowledge in that it can indicate not only the Rasta's age, but also his/her time as a Rasta.

Also, according to the Bible, Samson was a Nazarite who had "seven locks". Rastas argue that these "seven locks" could only have been dreadlocks,[35] as it is unlikely to refer to seven strands of hair.

Locks have also come to symbolize the Lion of Judah (its mane) and rebellion against Babylon. In the United States, several public schools and workplaces have lost lawsuits as the result of banning locks. Safeway is an early example, and the victory of eight children in a suit against their Lafayette, Louisiana school was a landmark decision in favor of Rastafari rights. More recently, a group of Rastafarians settled a federal lawsuit with the Grand Central Partnership in New York City, allowing them to wear their locks in neat ponytails, rather than be forced to "painfully tuck in their long hair" in their uniform caps.[36]

Rastafari associate dreadlocks with a spiritual journey that one takes in the process of locking their hair (growing hairlocks). It is taught that patience is the key to growing locks, a journey of the mind, soul and spirituality. Its spiritual pattern is aligned with the Rastafari movement. The way to form natural dreadlocks is to allow hair to grow in its natural pattern, without cutting, combing or brushing, but simply to wash it with pure water.

For the Rastas the razor, the scissors and the comb are the three Babylonian or Roman inventions.[37] So close is the association between dreadlocks and Rastafari, that the two are sometimes used synonymously. In reggae music, a follower of Rastafari may be referred to simply as a "dreadlocks" or "natty (natural) dread".

loosechickens
3-4-11, 1:07am
One of the things I like best about these forums is that I hear about new things I knew nothing about, which sparks me to begin to Google about more information so I'll be informed, and thereby end up learning lots of new things......thanks, guys....

here is an interesting piece about one of the Virginia prisoners who has spent a decade in solitary confinement there because of his committment to his religious beliefs and not cutting his hair:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-05-08-rastafarian-dreadlocks_N.htm

As we put human faces on these people, this question becomes far more interesting. I wonder how many of us hold principles so dear to us that we would suffer more than ten years in solitary confinement to protect them.

Whether you agree or not with the policy, one must have some degree of respect for persons who are willing to accept such treatment rather than abandon their religious beliefs. I'm not a religious person at all, but I can respect that.

My own perceptions of prisons, prisons, criminals, "justice", etc., have been gravely damaged by having experienced a family member being sent to prison. Before that experience, I might have echoed Peggy's comments, but the experience has changed me in fundamental ways. Our prison systems are SO terrible, abuses are SO prevalent, the huge majority of prisoners are NOT violent muggers, rapists, etc., but non-violent people, heavily poor minorities, caught up in the "War on Drugs", and now doomed to play out their part in the huge BUSINESS of incarceration, that provides jobs, profits for private prison companies, and votes for "law and order".

In just the Federal prison system alone, twenty years or so, there were 20,000 Federal prisoners, and now Federal prisons hold well over 200,000 of them. Is there anyone who really believes that we have ten times more crime now than then?

The U.S. now incarcerates a larger percentage of their population than virtually any other country in the world. If some member of YOUR family or friends have not yet been caught up in this behemoth industry, disguised as a "justice" system, you may be surprised to find, as we did, how easily it can happen.

dmc
3-4-11, 9:05am
If only his beliefs would have kept him from the 47 yr sentence for robbery, abduction, and gun charges. They gave up some of there rights when convicted. I'm don't think they should be given a choice. Cut their hair.

creaker
3-4-11, 12:15pm
If this is really meant as a punishment for being incarcerated, wouldn't it make more sense to deny all prisoners the right of religious expression? Instead of singling out a particular minority?

loosechickens
3-4-11, 12:45pm
"If only his beliefs would have kept him from the 47 yr sentence for robbery, abduction, and gun charges. They gave up some of there rights when convicted. I'm don't think they should be given a choice. Cut their hair." (dmc)
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There was a time, dmc, when I would have agreed with you. NOW, I look at the fact that he was sentenced to that 47 year prison term for a crime committed when he was 18 years old. He found his belief after he was in prison. Now that I've had some close up and personal looks at our criminal "justice" system, I'm no longer able to see things in such a black and white perspective.

One wonders which of us would hold fast to our religious principles over a ten year period of solitary confinement.

One also begins to get a sense of how things done when one is a teenager or young person, can reverberate (and often in the case of the poor, or minorities, reverberates far more than if the same crime was committed by a white, suburban, middle-class young person), when you experience knowing some of those people.

Having someone in my family get caught up in the "justice" system has changed my views almost 180 degrees. While I don't wish for others to have to have had that experience, it was amazing what I learned, how different the reality is from our perceptions of reality regarding criminals, prisons, role of punishment, etc.

As in our health care, we spend far more money than other countries, for demonstrably worse results.......yet we seem quite sure that the way we do it is the correct way, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps, for those who advocate not giving these people a choice.....although I'm not sure how much of a "choice" a choice between betraying your religious beliefs or maintaining them by suffering ten years or more of solitary confinement is......shall we force Jewish and Muslim prisoners to eat pork? Christians to be not allowed to have Bibles? Where is the line, exactly? For most people, the line seems almost to be, "as long as they don't trample on any rights for me or mine".

One almost has more respect for the integrity of this convicted felon than can be had for the people determined to punish him for his beliefs. Strange, huh?

ApatheticNoMore
3-4-11, 1:08pm
Yea, what I was getting at: consider dropping punishment as an ideology. The road is by no means clear from there as the criminal justice system is pretty much built on that base, so it's a hard one to even think beyond, but ..... I'm not too happy where the ideology of punishment has gotten us (besides aren't criminals supposed to have low impulse control anyway and be the last ones swayed by the prospect of future punishment. Well maybe not someone with an intricately planned crime but ...).

That society deserves to be protected from violent criminals, oh absolutely. I'm not saying don't lock anybody up and let them roam the streets. And if a weapon in one's hair is a genuine threat then by the same reasoning cut their hair (these are people who have proven they will use weapons aggressively after all).

If anyone thinks there is a danger of prison becoming so nice that people will want to go there. Sheesh, if being locked up in a cell for years and years without any of the things people take for granted (opposite sex companionship, freedom of movement, family, just general freedom to try stuff) is so appealing then maybe we should look at how bad the other choices are. And maybe the world should have more monkhoods or something for people who would choose that lifestyle if there are really so many! :laff:

Alan
3-4-11, 1:38pm
One almost has more respect for the integrity of this convicted felon than can be had for the people determined to punish him for his beliefs. Strange, huh?
I don't think this issue has anything to do with punishing people for their beliefs. I think it has everything to do with establishing safety and environmental standards within a potentially violent environment.

screamingflea
3-4-11, 6:01pm
As an aside, I can tell you as a martial artist that long hair is a tremendous liability in any kind of physical confrontation. It's a convenient and extremely effective (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdvAFCeOsGU) handle for controlling your opponent's entire body. So from a safety perspective, absolutely yes.

But I don't think this bureaucratic standoff has much to do with safety. Once it's escalated to the point of re-housing inmates to entirely different facilities, it's purely a battle of wills. At this point the safety argument is strictly PR to placate the public and the ACLU.

peggy
3-5-11, 10:46am
As an aside, I can tell you as a martial artist that long hair is a tremendous liability in any kind of physical confrontation. It's a convenient and extremely effective (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdvAFCeOsGU) handle for controlling your opponent's entire body. So from a safety perspective, absolutely yes.

But I don't think this bureaucratic standoff has much to do with safety. Once it's escalated to the point of re-housing inmates to entirely different facilities, it's purely a battle of wills. At this point the safety argument is strictly PR to placate the public and the ACLU.

I think you're right. I don't really believe it's a matter of punishing him for his beliefs. Presumably there are other Rastafarian's in prison who aren't in solitary. I also question the safety part. Maybe at one time that was the concern, but now it's a test of wills. And a stand off I don't see an end to really. They aren't going to back down because they are the law and in charge, as it were, and he isn't going to back down because he has something to prove as well. I also question that his is purely religious piety.
Two stubborn sides to a 'tangled' problem.

Gregg
3-8-11, 8:38am
Can't say I blame the guy for trying. Afterall, what else does he have to do? A clever way to fill the days and maybe meet a new lawyer who could take an interest in his case. Ya' never know.

loosechickens
3-8-11, 12:53pm
those who take solitary confinement lightly should talk to a few people who have experienced it. Even short periods of a few months of solitary cause many to have nervous breakdowns, and years and years of solitary confinement is literally almost cruel and unusual punishment for human beings, who are by nature not solitary creatures.

It's not just being alone, it is without visitors, without books (most prisoners in solitary are allowed a Bible, Koran or their particular holy book and that is all), no television, no sensory stimulation, in that box, alone for 23 hours of the day, then heavily shackled to be taken to a cage where they can shuffle around getting "exercise", and several times a week being taken to a place where they can shower. Guards do not talk to them (other than often happens, taunting), their food is slid through a slot in the door, the lights are on all the time so they often lose connection to whether it is day or night.......

those who think is it something that anyone but a person with great inner resources and conviction could handle for ten years, willingly, are blowing it through their butts. Sorry.

I've actually talked to a fair number of people who were held in solitary confinement. Most had some kind of mental or emotional breakdown before it ended, and few are not marked by the experience with some level of PTSD.

just thoughts from someone who's not experienced it, but who has talked at length with some who have about their experiences.

edited to add a note to peggy.......there originally were about 40 Rastafarians in the VA prisons who refused to cut their hair, but when placed in solitary confinement, just could not handle it, so compromised their religious beliefs and allowed their hair to be cut. I suspect this particular prisoner, who has been in solitary for more than ten years, has long since passed into the meditative way of life that is the hallmark of ascetics, some Hindu holy men, Buddhist monks, etc., who have withdrawn from the world into the inner reaches of their minds, so at this point, he probably is not suffering as most would, because he is mentally in a completely different space.

Most humans are not able to do that.

peggy
3-8-11, 4:32pm
So I wonder is it just this prison? Are Rastafarians in other prisons allowed to have their hair? I wonder why the ACLU is not involved if it's just this place. If it's system wide, again, I wonder if we are getting the whole story. Why exactly are they ordered to cut their hair? Is it truly a danger or is it a power struggle?
Although I think all religions are suspect, and put ridiculous demands on their followers, I guess I have to admire anyone with that kind of conviction about anything. Certainly when that conviction surrounds the belief that in order to achieve religious piety you must have long, matted, dirty hair. Just as silly as believing that all those with long, matted dirty hair are inherently bad, (although this guy is/was bad)
Again, I wonder where the ACLU stands on this case.

bae
3-8-11, 4:39pm
Certainly when that conviction surrounds the belief that in order to achieve religious piety you must have long, matted, dirty hair. Just as silly as believing that all those with long, matted dirty hair are inherently bad,

Dreadlocks don't have to be "dirty". Most people seem to wash them, apparently it is essential.

loosechickens
3-8-11, 8:10pm
Rastafarians in the Federal prison system are allowed to keep their dreadlocks. When we visited our relative at the Federal prison in Miami FL, I saw several with VERY long dreadlocks in the visiting room.

In fact, while Federal prisoners are often kept in state or county facilities while awaiting trials (if said state or county facility is closer to a Federal courthouse than Federal facilities, the Feds contract with the local prisons to house their prisoners), if the prison system has this restriction regarding Rastafarian hair, or that of any other religious group, the Feds will not house them in the state or local facility.

This is a situation peculiar to the Virginia prison system (and any other state systems that might have the same punitive regulations).

There is no reason for dreadlocks to be "dirty", as the hair can be washed in its matted state quite well.

I don't know whether the ACLU has ever involved itself with this question, but the Rastafarians are no different than the Sikhs who also do not ever cut their hair (although theirs is kept wrapped up in a turban), and some other sects of various religions.

loosechickens
3-8-11, 8:20pm
in answer to your question about the ACLU, apparently the ACLU has been involved in lawsuits at various times, attempting to challenge these rules, according to www.solitarywatch.com In 2003 in Virginia, the ACLU brought suit, but lost. Although decisions in other courts have upheld the right.

http://solitarywatch.com/2010/02/11/rastafarians-spend-a-decade-in-solitary-for-refusing-haircuts/

There is quite a bit more information in the above link than just the story about the VA inmates, as it also details about the ACLU lawsuit, and others brought in defense of Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Native Americans, etc. who face the same problems.

apparently policies vary widely