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Prisons to Remove Unapproved Religious Books

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The federal government has ordered prisons to remove all unapproved religious books from their libraries. The concern is that prisons could potentially be fertile recruiting grounds for terrorists. Is the move unconstitutional? How serious is the threat of extremist religion in prisons?

Guests:

Laurie Goodstein, religion correspondent for The New York Times; author of "Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries"

Gregory Saathoff, executive director of the Critical Incident Analysis Group, University of Virginia; co-author of "Out of the Shadows: Getting Ahead of Prisoner Radicalization"

Frederick al-Deen, former prison chaplain

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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