Mo. county jail to allow Muslim headscarves

CLAYTON, Mo. -- The St. Louis County jail has adopted a new policy that will let spare Muslim women from having religious headscarves removed in front of male inmates and staff.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the policy emerged from a meeting Monday of jail officials and members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In January, a jailer forcibly removed the headscarf of a 23-year-old Muslim woman arrested for an unpaid traffic ticket. The scarf, known as a hijab, protects women from exposing their heads or necks to men outside their immediate families.

The new policy will let a woman go to a private room to have the hijab searched, then resume wearing it while her arrest is processed. The jail is researching how to handle the issue with long-term inmates.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com