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External LinksUPDATE: Federal judge strikes down Colson's Iowa program (June 4, 2006) Cursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Bill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs' Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Charles Colson's Christian-based prison project on trial in IowaPrison Justice Ministries' InnerChange Freedom Initiative is a 'government-funded conversion program' says Americans United's Barry LynnIt isn't celebrity-laced like the trials of OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson or Robert Blake. It hasn't drawn the attention of CNN's Nancy Grace or the Fox News Channel's Greta Van Sustren, television's mavens of mystery. It appears to have little to do with whether or not President Bush's faith-based initiative is achieving "results." Nevertheless, the outcome of the legal proceedings currently underway in federal court in Des Moines, Iowa, could have a major impact on issues related to the separation of church and state for years to come. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and its co-plaintiff, Jerry Ashburn, an inmate at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility, located about 23 miles east of Des Moines, have filed suit against the Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries and its Christian rehabilitation program, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative. The suit, currently being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa Central Division in Des Moines, argues that the state gives preferential treatment to inmates enrolled InnerChange -- a program that has been operating at the Newton facility since 1999. According to Baptist Press, "the Iowa legislature has appropriated $310,000 in the current fiscal year for a 'value-based treatment program' at the Newton facility." Both sides agree that the outcome of the lawsuit could have profound consequences for the future of government-funded faith-based programs. "This case is one of the first legal challenges to the 'faith-based' initiative," Rob Boston, spokesperson for the Washington, DC-based Americans United, told Media Transparency in an email. "It challenges the use of taxpayer money for a program everyone admits is saturated with a particular religious viewpoint. If we win here, the implications for other types of faith-based funding could be staggering." Mark Earley, president and chief executive officer of Prison Fellowship Ministries, recently pointed out that he thought the outcome of the lawsuit could have far-reaching effects on other groups as well. "What I am actually more concerned about this suit is, if we were to lose, the chilling effect it would have on not only other departments of corrections around the United States, but other entities that want for faith-based ministries to have the opportunity to help solve really thorny social issues," Earley said. "The InnerChange program is essentially a government-funded conversion program," the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, maintained in a statement posted on the group's website. "Prison Fellowship is free to run evangelism programs on its own dime but has no business handing the bill to the taxpayer. This setup clearly violates the separation of church and state.'' "The lawsuit argues that Iowa's system affords those in the intensive, around-the-clock IFI program preferential treatment over inmates not involved. It also rebuts assertions that the program is open to 'all faiths.''' Court-filed documents maintain that, "InnerChange staffers have used materials that contain critical comments about other religions, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism," Ruben Rosario wrote in a recent column in the St Paul Pioneer Press. The case, according to a description on the website of The Roundtable on Religion & Social Welfare Policy prepared by Professor Ira Lupu and Professor Robert Tuttle, of George Washington University Law School in March, 2003, claims it: "involves the constitutionality of a faith-intensive program for prisoners currently being operated in a state prison in Iowa." It "alleges that the authorities responsible for the operation of the Newton Correctional Facility ... have entered into an unlawful relationship with the InnerChange Freedom Initiative ... [and] the complaint alleges that InnerChange, which is supported in part by state funds, operates and controls an entire wing of the Newton facility." According to the complaint:
"During opening arguments," the Sioux City Journal reported, Americans United lawyers said the program has taken over an entire unit of a state prison and turned it into an evangelical church. The group argued that most prisoners who enroll do so to take advantage of the special benefits, not to be closer to God. The benefits, the group said, include a dorm-like unit with separate bathrooms, special visits from family members, access to computers and access to classes needed for early parole." Earley told Baptist Press that the values-based program is constitutional because it is "voluntary." "It's open to any inmate who would like to participate. There's no religious test, so one can be a Christian, one can be a Muslim, one can be Jewish, one can be an atheist. We've had Druids and Wiccans participate in the program, so there is no faith test to be involved in the program." The former Virginia Attorney General acknowledged that the InnerChange program is "a Christian program. It is Christ-centered, so we make that clear up front; we disclose that to everyone." According to the IFI website, the initiative "is a revolutionary, Christ-centered, Bible- based prison program supporting prison inmates through their spiritual and moral transformation beginning while incarcerated and continuing after release." The project launched in 1997 in Texas, had as a goal, "reducing recidivism through acceptance of 'the life-transforming power of Jesus Christ,'" the Virginian-Pilot reported. At the time, Texas Governor George W. Bush was presiding over a record number of executions of death row prisoners.. He decided to "provide a prison, guards and basic operating services at taxpayer expense. The ministry promised to pay for all prisoner programs and religious training." Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries, through which the InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) operates, receives government funding for projects in four states, Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, and Texas. According to Baptist Press, funding for the initiative in Texas comes from the "private sector." "In Iowa, 40 percent of the cost of the program comes from the state; in Kansas, 27 percent of it is state-funded; in Minnesota, 22 percent." InnerChange services about 1,200 inmates. The states are responsible for covering about a third of costs for the programs, which comes to about $250,000 each. InnerChange contracts "call for the ministry to pay for all religious guidance and for the states to pay for other programs such as vocational training and high school equivalency courses." Despite President Bush's oft-repeated mantra that results matter, the jury is still out on faith-based programs. On August 5, 2003, Mark A.R. Kleinman published a piece in Slate that closely examined the much ballyhooed results of a University of Pennsylvania study that had concluded that Charles Colson's InnerChange Freedom Initiative -- a Christian-centered prison reform project sponsored by Colson's Prison Justice Ministries -- reduced recidivist rates amongst former prisoners. Kleinman, who teaches public policy at UCLA, found that contrary to the University of Pennsylvania's upbeat conclusion, the participants in InnerChange's project actually performed somewhat worse than the control group, and were slightly more apt to be re-arrested and re-imprisoned. Apparently, in order to attain its findings, the Pennsylvania study employed a device Kleinman called "selection bias," also known as "creaming." That factor, Kleinman explained, allowed InnerChange to ignore participants that dropped out or were kicked out of the program or that for some other reasons, never finished the program. In a Time magazine story earlier this year that touted Colson as one of the 25 most influential evangelical Christians in America, the former Watergate felon was praised for successfully reducing recidivism rates among prisoners, citing the University of Pennsylvania study debunked by Kleinman. In a recent article about the Iowa proceedings, Baptist Press also pointed to the Pennsylvania study as proof of InnerChange's success rates. In a late-October email exchange, Kleinman told Media Transparency that he stood by his original story. Despite the fact that the study has been cited numerous times by supporters of the president's faith-based initiative, "the original study was never published, and has now been pulled from the Penn website," Kleinman pointed out. "The author has never responded to my emails or phone calls," he added. According to American United's Rob Boston, the trial will run through the first week of November, and a decision isn't likely until "sometime early next year." When asked if he thought it possible that the case would ultimately land at the door of the Supreme Court, Boston explained that "The Supreme Court accepts less than two percent of all the cases appealed to it, so the odds are always slim that a legal challenge will make it on the high court's docket." However, the Iowa prison case "does present compelling questions that go to the very core of President Bush's 'faith-based' initiative. Given the importance of the issues raised, the case could be one of those two percent." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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