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Brief Warns Against Using Constitutional Rights As Bargaining Chips
On February 9, 2006, The Becket Fund filed a brief amicus curiae before the United States Supreme Court in Beard v. Banks, a case challenging the prison practice of depriving inmates of constitutional rights as an incentive to improve their behavior. But as the Becket Fund's brief explains, this "deprivation theory of behavior modification" represents a grave threat to religious liberty, one of the fundamental rights that human beings do not lose when they are imprisoned.
"At first glance, deprivation theory, especially when applied to true privileges such as use of the weight room or access to cigarettes, seems innocuous," the brief explains. "But when deprivation theory is applied to suppress not mere privileges, but constitutional rights that prisoners do not forfeit upon incarceration, . . . the theory transforms from innocuous to insidious."
The brief argues that "[b]ecause deprivation theory transforms constitutional rights into mere privileges that can be manipulated at will by prison officials, the theory is fundamentally inconsistent with this Court’s precedents that inmates retain constitutional rights in prison, and th[e] Court should reject it."
Resources & Documents
- February 9, 2006 Amicus Brief (PDF, 4KB)