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The New York Times
U.s.
Court Bars State
Effort Using Faith in Prisons
By NEELA BANERJEE,
nytimes.com on the Web, December 4, 2007
A federal appeals panel ruled
yesterday that a state-financed evangelical Christian program to help prisoners
re-enter civilian life fostered religious indoctrination and violated the
constitutional separation of church and state.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for
the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, was the latest in a series of rulings over the
last year to reinforce laws that bar government money from promoting religion,
said Robert Tuttle, a law professor at George Washington University who is an
expert on religion-based initiatives.
“The main thing it does is reaffirm the obligation of government not to fund
programs that intermingle secular and religious content,” Professor Tuttle said
of the new ruling. “The federal government has come to terms with that
over the last year. Even when it has won cases, there hasn’t been a single
decision that would allow the government to intertwine secular and religious
content.”
The current case was filed more than four years ago by Americans United for
Separation of Church and State against the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, an
organization affiliated with the Prison Fellowship Ministries and the Iowa
Corrections Department. Prison Fellowship Ministries was founded by
Charles W. Colson, an ally of President Bush and an influential evangelical who
went to prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up in the Nixon
administration.
“The decision casts a long, deep shadow over faith-based programs in states, and
even at the federal level,” said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the
church-state organization.
The group challenged the InnerChange program at a medium-security prison in
Newton, Iowa, that has 104 inmates enrolled in it. In its decision, the
appeals court quoted an InnerChange brochure describing the program as a
“24-hour-a-day, Christ-centered, biblically based program that promotes personal
transformation of prisoners through the power of the Gospel.”
No one is coerced to join the group, and sentences for prisoners who join are
not reduced.
InnerChange Freedom Initiative is the lone so-called transformational program,
religious or secular, at the prison. Its participants were allowed better
privileges than other inmates, like more family visits and computer access, the
appeals panel said. Anyone who wanted to participate had to be willing to
accept a “Christian based” program.
As a result, the panel found that the program violated the Constitution, because
“the indoctrination and definition criteria had the effect of advancing or
endorsing religion.”
A lower court ruled against the program in June 2006.
That earlier ruling slowed the momentum of a broad movement to introduce
religion-based programs in prisons, Professor Tuttle said.
The appeals court, however, reversed the part of the ruling that would have
required the InnerChange program to repay the $1.5 million it had received from
Iowa over the years that it has run the program.
Mark L. Earley, a former attorney general of Virginia who is president of Prison
Fellowship Ministries, said that he did not see the ruling as a defeat for his
group and that InnerChange did not plan to appeal.
InnerChange runs nine such programs around the country and all, including
Iowa’s, are now privately financed, Mr. Earley said.
“This gives us some additional guidance and clarity to meet the constitutional
test,” he said. “We’re still digesting how it might apply to other
programs.”
Mr. Earley said he did not know whether Iowa would renew its contract with
InnerChange next year. Officials at the Iowa attorney general’s office
said they were reviewing the decision.
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