As a follow-up to an earlier post , the jail at Rappahannock Virginia, which came under fire for removing religious messages from mail to inmates, has changed its policy.
Previously, anything cut and pasted from the Internet was removed and put in inmates' personal files but not given to them.
Under the new policy–crafted in response to an American Civil Liberties Union complaint–mail clerks will now check those copied pages for religious material and make sure faith-based details get to the inmates. In January, a clerk cut out a letter filled with biblical references, an act jail Superintendent Joseph Higgs called "a simple mistake." Civil rights activists called it unconstitutional.
Officials claim this problem was a simple error in support of a policy designed to limit the mountains of paper inmates were stockpiling and using for destructive purposes. But it's nice to see – recognizing the damage done with such a blanket practice – that it has been amended for the better.
