by Matt Barr

The world's tiredest argument, again

After Richard Cohen made the how would you feel?!?! argument in the Washington Post yesterday, I'm seeing it everywhere all of a sudden:

Here's a good test for whether a faith-based initiative works from a constitutional perspective: If the god-squadders would scream if an atheism-based initiative were put into place instead -- teaching rationality, secular ethics, and personal responsibility, a la the Josephson Institute -- their funda-nutter-based program is probably a big constitutional no-no!

Admit it, you pshaw-ed when I wrote, "Now, the First Amendment, as applied to the states, prohibits blows to non-Christians' self esteem."

The issue at hand is the constitutionality of offering inmates at the New Mexico Women's Correctional Facility a choice between 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement or "the God pod," the Life Principles Community/Crossings Program, which this breathless report (a report is "breathless" if, inter alia, it begins with two epigrammatic quotes, the second from an unassailable authority meant to make the first look alarming) describes... well, no, it doesn't. After introducing it, the author lets us know "officials" (the bad guys) consider it a real "success story"; that it's been around for years with "enthusiastic support" from the prison chaplain; that it's among programs chosen to "pioneer" a new partnership with a "fundamentalist Christian ministry"; that while it is not the only religious activity a the prison it is, "by far, the most institutionalized and structured" (raising the question why what it actually does seems so inscrutable); that it is "blurring the line between church and state... harkening a new turn in corrections toward Christian-based programming"; that "religious programming for prisoners has been around for years"... you get the idea: It hardly matters what the program actually does -- it appears to be enough that it's religion-based.

We do find out later in the article, which appears generally to be assailing federal "faith-based initiatives," that the program receives no federal funding ("the National Faith-Based Initiative has not specifically provided money for the Crossings program" -- has it more generally? It appears not; it "is funded out of New Mexico's general fund (through the CCA), as well as through seasonal in-prison sales of food and other popular prison items to inmates." But there's a but! But the president has "provid[ed] an overt justification for 'volunteer' [scare quotes in original] in-prison faith-based programs").

After an appropriate level of alarm is raised about such things -- 1,687 words' worth -- we do find out what the Crossings Program does:

With 30 women in residence and another 35 on a waiting list, the Crossings pod is explicitly religious – and rigorously so. The program involves engaging in spiritual counseling and religious meetings, prayer walks, meditation, memorization of the New Testament and 732 hours of activities ostensibly geared toward helping a woman succeed after her release from prison – with a mandate that the woman stays involved in a "faith community."...

When the Crossings women join together to sing and dance to music ... it is only to devotional music deemed appropriate. During a visit, several of the women perform expressive dances to "I Can Only Imagine" and "Psalms Three" and to hear a vocal performance of "City Called Glory" by the head of the choir. The emotional intensity of these performances is clear; several women are, in fact, moved to tears. "It instills character in all of us," one inmate says. "It betters our lives through belief in God."

Officials (the bad guys) claim program participants rarely return to prison, and this recidivism claim is true, says the author, but!, "those numbers are based on 'graduates,' not on the total number of women who have enrolled in the program and dropped out, or been removed for drug sales or using the program as a cover for other illicit activities." It's funny, they separate how many people get jobs after graduating from high school and how many people get jobs as high school dropouts, too.

I kid because I care, of course. I think it's irrefutable that training and education that drastically cuts the recidivism rate deserves credit and probably support, and at the same time I acknowledge that any program like this, religion-based or not, ought to be voluntary: While I have no statistics in front of me to support this, I'll bet that like most things you learn best to disavow crime and violence when you want to learn. And there is a serious inquiry to be made whether a purportedly "voluntary" program indeed amounts to a government forcing inmates to convert to a religion.

That said, it is clear that, as Mr. Justice Thomas noted in dissent recently, the constitution demands less within a prison -- how could it not? Would anyone be in favor of guaranteeing prison inmates freedom of assembly, freedom of interstate travel, or the right to bear arms?

Further, if it's true, and I imagine it is even not having consulted the primary sources, that programs like the Crossings Program (if not the Crossings Program itself) are cropping up a lot lately because of newly available access to federal funds, that could mean two things. One is that programs like the Josephson Institute -- which appears to concentrate its efforts on government, journalism, business and the military, not prisons, was doing a crappy job keeping prisoners from returning to prison, or -- see immediately above -- weren't interested in trying, and Christian ministries are. Or, a third thing, I guess: Secular outfits were doing just great, but fire and brimstone Bible thumpers kicked them out at the first President Bush-inspired opportunity in order to greedily amass more converts. I suppose there are people who are more inclined to believe the latter than I am, but I'm skeptical till I see what secular programs are being replaced by Christian ones and how successful they've been.

To sum up a post that got a lot longer than I'd planned: The constitutional question is more complicated, as it often is, than how would you feel?!, and articles meant to scare people about the sinister influence of religion are likely to be ineffective in convincing people who don't feel as threatened as the author seems to that ministry is an insidious intrusion on prison life.

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