c. 2003 Religion News Service
(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)
(UNDATED) A new report by the University of Pennsylvania places Prison Fellowship Ministries and its founder Charles Colson, in the forefront of a controversy over how to address the needs of the thousands of ex-prisoners released each year from the nation’s penal institutions.
The study, which was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, examined the effectiveness of Prison Fellowship’s InnerChange Freedom Initiative, which provides spiritual counseling, job training and mentoring to prisoners nearing the end of their sentences.
Implemented in Texas in 1997 during the administration of then-Gov. George W. Bush, the program has since been implemented in selected prisons in Iowa and Kansas.
In examining the effectiveness of the Texas program, the study found that while only 75 of the 177 study participants actually completed all phases of the program, those who graduated were half as likely as a control group to be reincarcerated during the first two years after release.
CRRUCS director Byron Johnson, who headed the study, said while the study is not definitive and requires more research, the results were nonetheless encouraging. “Prisoners who complete this program are significantly less likely to be rearrested,” he said. He also said that while only 42 percent of the program participants graduated, Prison Fellowship had little or no control over those who left the study.
For example, 51 of the 102 prisoners who dropped out did so because they were paroled before completing the program. According to the report, the remaining dropouts included “24 who voluntarily quit the program, 19 who were removed for disciplinary reasons, 7 who were removed at the request of the staff, and 1 who was removed for serious medical problems.”
For Colson, the results of the study _ even if somewhat mixed _ vindicate both his nearly three decades of work with inmates, as well as his own remarkable story.
A former special counsel to President Richard Nixon, Colson served seven months in federal prison in 1974 after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal.
Emerging from prison chastened but with a newfound faith in God, Colson founded Prison Fellowship Ministries in 1976 to serve the needs of inmates like those he left behind in prison.
Nearly 30 years later, Prison Fellowship has an international reputation and Colson’s public image, once badly tarnished by the scandals of the Nixon administration, is nearly pristine.
This is not to say he is without his critics. Some liberals take issue with the evangelical approach the organization takes in rehabilitating prison inmates. For example, the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, has characterized the IFI study as “junk science driven by right-wing ideology.”
In February, Lynn and Americans United filed suit against Prison Fellowship and the state of Iowa, charging that the IFI program in Iowa violates the First Amendment by using government funds to coerce prisoners into a religious conversion. Colson vehemently denies the charges, arguing some of the suit’s allegations are overblown while others are patently untrue.
Yet, despite the challenges to his work, Colson remains a favorite among political and religious conservatives. He has received numerous plaudits and awards, including, most recently, the $250,000 William E. Simon Foundation Prize in Social Entrepreneurship.
As a prison chaplain, the mixed results of the IFI study seem emblematic of the overall impact of Colson and Prison Fellowship _ positive, but not without drawbacks.
To the world outside of prison, Prison Fellowship IS prison ministry. This is due in part because society has so little regard for convicted felons. Our understandable fear of being assaulted _ or worse _ gets translated into a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” attitude. In so doing, we fail to realize that 96 percent of all convicts will eventually return to the streets.
Thus, when a high profile organization like Prison Fellowship sheds much-needed light on prisoner issues, it tends to obscure the work of those who have been laboring in the vineyard for years.
Yet, the reality is that Prison Fellowship is but one of many volunteer organizations whose services are utilized by prison chaplains. Indeed, a peculiar irony in the brouhaha over the work of Prison Fellowship is that, on a daily basis, chaplains risk life and limb in ways that most Prison Fellowship staffers, volunteers and supporters can’t begin to imagine.
At the end of the day, however, Colson and his organization deserve much credit for seeking to serve the needs of a despised population.
It is, after all, the Christian way.
DEA END RNS
