Richland County Jail Changes Policy on Religious Head Coverings

The Richland County jail has changed its policy to allow Muslim women to wear religious head coverings after one woman reported to a national Muslim advocacy group that an officer told her to remove hers when she was booked at the jail on New Year's Eve.

Leaders of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) made the request for a policy change after the Dec. 31, 2012 incident, which they say was a denial of religious rights.

The Muslim woman complained that a booking officer told her to remove her head covering, called a hijab, so that she could have her photo taken, according to a press release from CAIR. The officer "disregarded the woman's religious concerns and 'intimidated' her into removing her scarf in the presence of a male officer," according to the release.

Jail officials told the woman's husband that "all Muslim women take off their scarves" when in custody, according to CAIR.  

A March 12 letter from Ronaldo D. Myers, director of the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, explained that officers would no longer ask women to take off religious head coverings. 

"As requested, we have reviewed and updated our policies to ensure clarity with our staff on the processing and searching of female detainees of the Muslim faith, and specifically have exempted the wearing of religious headwear from our facility's 'Prohibited Acts' policy," Myers wrote.

CAIR leaders say they are satisfied with the change in Richland County, but that they continue to face the same problem at jails and prisons across the country.

"We welcome the detention center's decision to allow detainees to exercise their constitutionally-protected religious freedom," said CAIR National Legal Director Nadhira Al-Khalili. "We have recently received reports of denial of religious rights at correctional institutions in other states and are working to achieve similarly positive resolutions in those cases."