News

Pagan prisoner lawsuit revived

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CARSON CITY, Nev. — Pagan inmates at the Lovelock Correctional Center may finally see their day in court. Three judges on the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals ruled in March that a case dating back to the 2009 destruction of an outdoor Pagan worship area will be able to move forward. A lower court had made a summary judgment against the plaintiffs, but the appeals court panel has now found that there is, in fact, enough open questions to allow for a more detailed look at the evidence. Brian DeBarr, Chioke Gadsden, and Nathan Peterson were all inmates at Lovelock.

News

Prison Ministry 2.0: Emailing Inmates

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As the United States and its free citizens hurl through the second decade of the 21st century, most of its ample prison population is solidly rooted in the final decade of the 20th, with regards to email. While inmates in some prisons have had limited access to email since as far back as 2005, when the messages would be printed out and included with other mail for review and distribution, most are limited to old fashioned snail mail. But more recently an increasing number of prisoners have been allowed to send and receive messages through an officially-sanctioned service called CorrLinks. The Wild Hunt posed the question: how has this impacted Pagan prison ministry? CorrLinks, a web site run by Advanced Technologies Group of West Des Moines, Iowa, is an intermediary between prisoners and those on the outside with whom they wish to contact.

Paganism

Culture and Community: The Complexity of Pagans in Prison

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I recently had the opportunity with my graduate program to go into the bowels of San Quentin State Correctional Facility in San Rafael, California. San Quentin is one of the most famous state penitentiaries in California, and the only facility that enacts capital punishment in the state. There are approximately 4,000 inmates currently in San Quentin, the range of crimes span from drug possession to murder. Crime and prisons go hand in hand. The population of prisoners in any institution is made up of a myriad of races, ages, and religions, thereby needing a host of services to address the many needs of different populations of people.