Bill Berkowitz
November 1, 2005

Charles Colson's Christian-based prison project on trial in Iowa

Prison Justice Ministries' InnerChange Freedom Initiative is a 'government-funded conversion program' says Americans United's Barry Lynn

It 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:

1. "The prisoners in the program are involved in 'intensive, evangelical, Biblically-based instruction from a Christian fundamentalist viewpoint."
2. "The prisoners who participate in the program receive privileges denied to non-participants."
3. "Only Christians are permitted to serve on the staff of InnerChange as paid employees or volunteers."
4. "The state pays a portion of the salaries of InnerChange employees."

"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."