Halting faith-based prison program would be mistake

"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 in June. "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 re-entry 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, prerelease 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 — 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.