Social Justice and Minority Religions in Prison

Abstract

Concern with equal opportunities lies at the heart of debates about social justice. The sense that individuals or groups may be systematically prevented from obtaining goods or services to which they have a right leads to a sense of injustice. There is no justice in arrangements that exclude entire categories of people from their entitlements. Access to such goods as education, health care, housing, jobs, and promotion is often central to philosophical and legal discussions of equal opportunities. I will argue that, in some circumstances, access to religious and spiritual care is also a matter of equal opportunities and therefore of social justice. The focus of this chapter is on what I perceive to be injustice meted out to members of major world religions and some new religious movements who find themselves in the religious minority in England and Wales. Their opportunities to practice religion are significantly worse than those enjoyed by members of mainstream Christian churches and denominations.