In 2011 North Carolina’s legislature voted to eliminate all funding for chaplains serving correctional institutions. According to Gary Friedman of the American Correctional Chaplains Organization, North Carolina later restored 33 percent of the funding, but it was still a drastic cut. Similar proposals are pending in other state legislatures. Some are cutting funding immediately; others are simply not replacing chaplains when they die or retire. One state’s commissioner of corrections recently told a statewide chaplains’ conference: “I am mandated to secure, educate, and medicate””religion is not an essential part of that mandate.” Friedman reports that New York State has seen its corps of prison chaplains reduced by nearly 50 percent over the past two years because of a hiring freeze. He pointed out that the hiring freezes have also cut into the remaining chaplains’ support staff””their administrative assistants and volunteer coordinators””which has left the chaplains themselves with more paperwork to do and less time for religious services and counseling.
