The Canadian Prison Chaplain Controversy

A lot of folks are agitated about the Conservative government's plan to cut the number of prison chaplains. They point out that it will eliminate all, or nearly all, the non-Christian chaplains. That, many argue, is an attack on religious liberty.

It isn't. I'm the first to fight for religious liberty and freedom of conscience, but it is not as if those who do not have a chaplain will not be served. It is only a matter of whether the taxpayer should pay the salary for their minister--something he does not do for those of us on the outside. Those who have no chaplain will simply be served by the local minister from the nearby community.

Is there nevertheless a bias here in favour of Christianity? I don't think so; it's purely a practical matter.

Here are the stats for the prison population, according to a story in the Washington Post:

“According to corrections data, in the last fiscal year, 36 percent of Canada’s nearly 15,000 federal prison inmates identified themselves as Catholic; 18 percent as Protestant; 5 percent as Muslim; 4 percent as following aboriginal spirituality; and 2 percent as Buddhist. Sikhs and Jews registered less than 1 percent each. Twenty percent said they were nonreligious.”

So—taking out the nonreligious, we have 45% Catholic, 22.5% Protestant, 6.25% Muslim, 5% native religions, 2.5% Buddhist. This is not quite what you would expect from the general population--it seems that Jews do not go to prison. Note too that the overwhelming majority of Native Canadians do not follow what are called native religions, but are Christian.

The government wants to reduce the total number of chaplains to 71. Now, how do you equitably distribute 71 chaplains into that percentage? The math, if I have it right, says 32 Catholics, 16 Protestants, 4 Muslims, 3.5 native religions, 2 Buddhists, 1 each for smaller communities. 

Now we come to some problems. Those random communities are all below 1%, and cannot all be served; who gets a chaplain and who does not?

Then there are those native communities. It is arbitrary and meaningless to throw them all into one statistic as if they are the same. Native religions, such as they are, vary widely, and each probably has only a few thousand followers in total. Who gets a chaplain, and who does not?

This leaves us with the Muslims and the Buddhists. But all religions are not like Christianity. Christianity has a tradition of regular worship, sacraments, and ministers. Neither Buddhism nor Islam share these features. There is, in fact, no recognized position equivalent to "minister" or "priest" in either of these religions. Simply put, no Buddhist or Muslim needs a chaplain, as a Catholic would, in order to fully practice his religion. While it might seem like equality to insist on the invented office, it would really be practically almost pointless for the prisoners involved.

In any case, what is the practical value of one or four chaplains of a given denomination hired to serve the entire prison system? If they are to serve all prisoners, the travel costs would be insupportable--certainly not what I'd want to spend my tax money on. If they stay put, they are no better than no chaplain at all to the majority of their faith community.

The obvious solution is the one the government proposes: apart from the largest denominations, the local faith community will serve their own in prisons on a volunteer basis. The paid chaplains will have it as part of their jobs to make sure they are indeed served.