Ni libertad ni religión: La libertad religiosa en contextos carcelarios en los Estados Unidos

To understand what religion means is critical to determine the scope of protection of the First Amendment of the Constitution. In the United States of America, the concept of the religion has been watered down up to the point of becoming irrelevant under the light of its constitutional warrant. This conceptual detriment of religion as a constitutional category can be verifyed in the province of prision litigation. In this paper, we submitt to analysis the caselaw of religious accommodations for those within the prison walls. Specifically, we observe that judicial practice overlooks individual’s religious beliefs when it comes to guarantee a First Amendment claim. Instead, the adjudication process by the judicary hinges on much more secular criteria — those of prisions administration.