Court upholds unconstitutionality of faith-based prison program founded by Nixon chief counsel

[ProSense]

Eighth Circuit Upholds Unconstitutionality of Faith-Based Prison Program

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, including Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, sitting by designation, upheld the substance of an opinion by Chief District Judge Robert W. Pratt of the Southern District of Iowa that concluded that a faith-based inmate rehabilitation program funded through government payments violated the Establishment Clauses the U.S. and Iowa Constitutions.

In Americans United v. Prison Fellowship Ministries, the plaintiffs alleged that inmates participating in the faith-based program were given better treatment and privileges (including a potentially faster track to parole) than other inmates, and that staff of the organization running the program were "frequently hostile to other faiths," according to the Des Moines Register. The treatment program, known as the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, is sponsored by Prison Fellowship Ministries, which was founded by Charles W. Colson.

The Circuit Court upheld the District Court's conclusion that, during 2000-2004, "religious indoctrination (could) be reasonably attributed to Iowa's funding" and that access to the program "was not allocated on neutral criteria and was not available on a nondiscriminatory basis" and thus "the direct aid to InnerChange violated the Establishment Clauses of the United States and Iowa Constitutions." The Court further agreed with the District Court's conclusion that, during 2005-2007, when the state changed the method of reimbursement to a per diem structure in an attempt to classify the program as one receiving indirect aid, an inmate would have "had no genuine and independent private choice (as to participating in a program) because he had only one option" and thus this too violated the Establishment Clauses of the United States and Iowa Constitutions.

The panel only disagreed with the District Court's order requiring InnerChange to repay the state funds received under all contracts, reasoning that because "specific statutes, presumptively valid, authorized the InnerChange funding," the District Court should not have "granted recoupment for services rendered before its order" regarding the constitutionality of the program, although "the defendants cannot rely on the legality of the program and cannot retain any funds for services rendered after the district court's order."

Coverage and analysis of the constitutionality of the program can be found in this 2006 article by Marty Lederman on Balkanization.

Charles (Chuck) Wendell Colson (born October 16, 1931, in Boston, Massachusetts) was the chief counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973 and was one of the Watergate Seven, jailed for Watergate-related charges

<...>

On October 3, 2002, Colson was one of the co-signers of the Land letter sent to President Bush. The letter was written by Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was co-signed by four prominent American evangelical Christian leaders and Colson was among them. The letter outlined their theological support for a just war pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

On June 18, 2003, Colson was invited by President George W. Bush to the White House to present results of a scientific study on the faith-based initiative, InnerChange, at the Texas Jester II (later renamed in honor of Carol Vance) prison facility. Colson led a small group that includes Dr. Byron Johson of the University of Pennsylvania, who was the principal researcher of the InnerChange study, a few staff member of Prison Fellowship and three InnerChange graduates to the meeting. In the presentation, Dr. Johnson explained that 171 participants in the InnerChange program were compared to a matched group of 1,754 inmates from the prison's general population. The study found that only 8 percent of InnerChange graduates, as opposed to 20.3 percent of inmates in the matched comparison group, became offenders again in a two-year period. In other words, the recidivism rate was cut by almost two-thirds for those who complete the faith-based program. Those who are dismissed for disciplinary reasons or who drop out voluntarily, or those who are paroled before completion, have a comparable rate of rearrest and incarceration.<24><25>

link