Opinion ID: 217826
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the chaplaincy program

Text: Recognizing its obligation to accommodate the religious needs of inmates, CDCR currently offers full- and part-time salaried positions for clergy of five faiths: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Native American. Although McCollum labels this program The Five State-Sanctioned Faiths Policy, as we describe below, CDCR does not have a policy intended to restrict the paid-chaplaincy positions to these five faiths in particularrather, over time the CDCR paid-chaplaincy program has evolved to include these five faiths. Officials indicate future evolution is envisioned as required by inmate needs. Beginning in approximately 1930, prison inmates were served by chaplains employed by the state, apparently through positions that were denomination-specific. In 1940, the State Personnel Board (SPB) merged all chaplaincy classes into a single, non-denominational class. In 1957, the SPB created three new denomination-specific paid chaplaincy classes: Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, in order to insure that projected layoffs did not disparately affect any one religious group. In 1981, the SPB created a paid Muslim chaplaincy position at CDCR's request, apparently to accommodate perceived inmate need. In 1989, in response to a consent decree, CDCR requested and received a paid-chaplaincy position for a Native American Spiritual Leader. Likely because the current positions are the result of a program that has evolved over more than fifty years and not of a single policy, CDCR acknowledges that it has not applied particular criteria to its determinations of the necessity of each of the current paid positions. However, CDCR alleged as part of this litigation that in the future it will consider the following factors in determining the need for a given paid chaplaincy position: (1) liturgical needs; (2) religious group size; (3) existing and alternative means of accommodation; (4) security; (5) cost; and, (6) other institutional operational needs. CDCR also stated that it has applied these criteria and determined that a paid Wiccan chaplain is not required. The paid chaplains are responsible for providing religious services to inmates of their own faiths, as well as serving the needs of inmates of other faiths through, among other tasks, provid[ing] spiritual and moral guidance to ... residents and supervis[ing] the arranging of programs conducted in the institution by visiting religious and allied groups. The paid chaplains are also responsible for approving religious programming by volunteer community clergy and religious representatives. Such volunteers are recruited to meet inmate needs not directly provided for by paid chaplains. If no ordained chaplain of a particular faith is able to conduct services, the warden has discretion to allow a qualified inmate to minister to the religious needs of that particular faith.