Striking Down Hope for Inmates

Striking Down Hope for Inmates


By Mark L. Earley


"What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons," a distinguished bipartisan private commission said in a sobering report issued earlier this month. "It comes home with prisoners." And, of course, it affects whole neighborhoods, cities and even states. In other words: The violence bred inside our nation's prisons endangers the safety of our communities.
By coincidence, this report by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, whose members include a former U.S. attorney general and a former FBI director, came out just six days after a federal judge in Iowa declared one very effective faith-based program for prisoners unconstitutional. It was the kind of decision that can only worsen a situation cited by the commission: the severe lack of programs to help prisoners prepare for reentry to society.
The commission rightly notes that nothing contributes more to violence and danger in prisons than idleness. "But because lawmakers have reduced funding for programming," it says, "prisoners today are largely inactive and unproductive. Highly structured programs are proven to reduce misconduct in correctional facilities and to lower recidivism rates after release."
You'd think, then, that the last thing the courts would do would be to take a proven tool away from prison administrators by closing down a highly structured, intensive program that offers character education, community service, pre-release training and mentoring by community volunteers on the outside.
But that's precisely what a federal judge in Iowa did this month. In deciding a lawsuit filed by Barry Lynn and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt ruled such a program unconstitutional and ordered it shut down within 60 days. Why? Because the program -- run by the InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) -- is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. As such, he ruled, it cannot contract with and receive funds from the state of Iowa, even though 60 percent of IFI's funds were privately donated and even though state funds are used only for nonsectarian aspects of the program.
Never mind that independent studies by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the University of Pennsylvania have shown that IFI reduces recidivism. Or that the judge himself recognized that recidivism is a major problem in Iowa and that the primary purpose of the Iowa Department of Corrections' contract with IFI was to reduce recidivism. Never mind that no other organization offers such comprehensive and intensive treatment and educational opportunities for inmates.
The judge ruled that IFI "coerced" prisoners into enrolling. How? Basically by offering them a quality program and the tools they need to succeed on the outside. As if drug treatment, job preparation and general education are some kind of bait to lure unsuspecting prisoners into a Christian program where they can be converted.
Every single prisoner who testified at trial said that he was not coerced into enrolling in the program. Participants are exposed to the religious aspects of the program only as a result of their voluntary choice to enroll. Every potential participant is told about the religious aspects of the program. And participants may leave it at any time without penalty. (By the way, the IFI program is continuing to operate while the case is appealed.)
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the court's decision was its gross oversimplification of evangelical Christianity. The court relied heavily on "expert" testimony that evangelical Christians by definition must seek to convert others and that any actions they take must be construed to that end. That generalization weighed more heavily in the judge's decision than did testimony from IFI staff members that they did not try to convert inmates to Christianity and that IFI made allowances for non-evangelical Christian inmates to attend services of their choice, observe Ramadan or attend sweat-lodge ceremonies.
To add injury to insult, the judge ordered that IFI refund the $1.5 million it had received from the state of Iowa for services rendered -- funds that Iowa believes have been well spent and does not want back. This is unprecedented and unfair. Under a valid contract arrived at through a competitive bidding process, Prison Fellowship and IFI in good faith spent time, resources and human capital providing needed services to prisoners. And prisoners and Iowa corrections officials testified that the program is working.
The extreme and punitive nature of the judge's ruling sends a clear message to faith-based organizations that provide needed social services -- social services that few governments or other private organizations have the resources to provide. The judge's message is this: Go away. Go away, even if your program is working and inmates are volunteering and asking for the services.
Given the warehousing of prisoners today and the tragically disproportionate number of minorities behind bars, that's the worst message any government could send. With 2.3 million Americans in prison, this year alone, more than 600,000 of them will be released back to our communities. And within three years, two-thirds of them will be arrested for new crimes against new victims.
"We all bear responsibility for creating correctional institutions that are safe, humane, and productive," the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons concludes. "This is the moment to confront confinement in the United States."
It is certainly not the moment to exclude programs -- faith-based or not -- that offer "safe, humane, and productive" solutions.
The writer, a former attorney general of Virginia, is president of Prison Fellowship (http://www.prisonfellowship.org), which works with prisoners and their families.