More than 650,000 inmates will complete their sentences in state and federal prisons and return to their communities this year. Two thirds of them will likely be arrested within three years of leaving. That makes our prison system a warehousing system for repeat offenders instead of a stopover in an otherwise productive life.
The people at Prison Fellowship, based in Landsdowne, Va., know this and dedicate themselves to reducing the recidivism rate. The organization, founded by Charles Colson, a former inmate who spent seven months in Alabama?s Maxwell Prison for a Watergate-related conviction, works to transform prisoners? lives through its rehabilitation and job training programs based on biblical principles.
The training works. According to a 2003 University of Pennsylvania study, graduates of the group?s InnerChange Freedom Initiative program in Texas were half as likely to be arrested or imprisoned in the two years after they were released as other prisoners.
Not everyone likes its methods, though. Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued PF. The group claimed PF?s IFI program at Newton Correctional Facility in Iowa constitutes state endorsement of evangelical Christianity.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pratt agreed with the plaintiffs in a June 2006 ruling, equating the group to a cult whose every waking moment is spent working to convert people. He forced them to return $1.5 million the state paid for them to provide secular job training classes as a result. The majority of the program is paid for with private dollars.
The problem with Judge Pratt?s interpretation is that no one forces the prisoners to join the program, which eliminates the claim that the state forces religion on participants. And it serves a very secular purpose of helping to reduce the number of prisoners taxpayers must support.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals (8th Circuit) that included retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O?Connor heard an appeal last month. The judges must overturn the lower court ruling. The U.S. Constitution never guaranteed citizens freedom from religion, but freedom of religion. The IFI program clearly meets that constitutional test by providing a service only to those who choose to enter its program.
Mark Earley, the president and chief executive officer of Prison Fellowship USA, said a decision upholding the lower court ruling would slow plans to open other IFI programs. The bigger issue, he said, is whether it would cut off government funding to other faith-based organizations ? including Catholic Charities and The Salvation Army, not to mention groups of every religious stripe. Many groups like Prison Fellowship adhere to a religious world view and provide the government with vital social services ? services the courts have so far upheld as constitutional.
But perhaps the biggest consequence of a favorable 8th Circuit decision is that we can once again start asking ourselves, as Early said, “are they [prisoners] going to come out better or come out worse?” For their sake and ours, the answer must be better. States must be given the freedomto choose which programs lead to that outcome.
