Two civil rights groups claim Muslim inmates at Miami-Dade County jails haven’t been fed meals in accordance with Islamic law.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Council on American-Islamic Relations Florida said Wednesday the organizations have received more than 35 complaints from inmates since the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department began serving non-Halal meals to Muslim inmates.
Both organizations claim the county’s jail facilities stopped serving non-Halal meals in October 2014, in violation of its faith-based meals policy.
Under Islamic law, a Halal diet prohibits the meat of certain animals and mandates that the food not come into contact with other non-Halal meals, among other things.
CAIR Florida and the ACLU said they have informed corrections officials about the specific complaints of 17 Muslim inmates, but there has been no change.
“Individuals do not lose their constitutional rights just because they are behind bars,” Shalini Goel Agarwal, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement. “When a particular diet is part of an inmate’s religious practice, jails need to respect that, especially when they already do so for inmates other faiths.”
The organizations said they will now file formal grievances after repeated letters and meetings have failed to bring about change.
“There has been no change in religious meals for Muslims incarcerated during the month of Ramadan,” Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department spokeswoman Janelle Hall told Local 10 News.