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| Unkept Hair No Longer Means Segregation For VA Inmates |
| By augustafreepress.com |
| Published: 11/18/2010 |
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After 11 years and an ACLU lawsuit, the Virginia Department of Corrections confirmed today that it was finally allowing prisoners with long hair or beards out of segregation. The ACLU lawsuit, filed in 2003 on behalf of Muslim and Rastafarian prisoners, claimed that DOC’s policy requiring inmates to be clean shaven and to keep their hair short violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law prohibiting religious discrimination against incarcerated persons. RLUIPA was passed by Congress in 2000. Even though no federal prison anywhere in the country has such policies, DOC claimed that long-haired inmates are a security risk. In court, DOC was never able to offer evidence that long hair had ever been a threat to prison security, but a Richmond federal district court in 2006 and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008 upheld DOC’s policy. Since then the ACLU and other advocates for prisoners’ rights have repeatedly asked DOC to do away with the policy. Read More. |
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