Religion behind bars in Europe: comparative remarks on religious rights of prisoners

Using prison as a privileged observatory for relevant social processes and legal categories, the paper addresses some problematic issues of the legal regulation of prisoners’ religious freedom in Europe by outlining the influence of international and European law and comparatively analyse national prison systems in three European countries (England, France and Italy). Trying to investigate the impact of the new common challenges related to religion in prison (e.g. increasing cultural and religious diversity of prison population, the threat posed by radicalization) in terms of convergence of legal solutions or persistence of differences between the countries considered, the aspect which will be specifically addressed is the legal treatment of religious pluralism within the prison context and, in particular, the possible difference in treatment of majority and minority faiths.