NEWS FEATURE: Prison Program Aiming to Transform Lives With Faith Faces Suit

c. 2003 Religion News Service LINO LAKES, Minn. _ Inside Bishop Cottage at this Minnesota Correctional Facility, a small choir of men harmonize in one corner. “Change my heart, oh God,” the octet sings. “Make it ever true. Change my heart, oh God, may I be like you.” In the library next door, two men’s […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

LINO LAKES, Minn. _ Inside Bishop Cottage at this Minnesota Correctional Facility, a small choir of men harmonize in one corner. “Change my heart, oh God,” the octet sings. “Make it ever true. Change my heart, oh God, may I be like you.”

In the library next door, two men’s heads are bowed over a table as they spend time together in prayer. Minutes later, they’ll all be gathered in a classroom to continue a Bible-based education aiming to transform them.


This is life in prison at the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, a Christian-infused program seeking to change men inside prison in hopes they won’t return once they’ve been released from behind the barbed wire and security gates.

“It really is a two-pronged effect,” said Dan Kingery, director of the program located in a suburb north of Minneapolis. “Certainly you want men to leave prison and stay out, but you also want the experience in prison to be different.”

The program sponsored by Prison Fellowship, the ministry founded by ex-convict and ex-Nixon aide Chuck Colson, also is the subject of a lawsuit. The Iowa version of the program has been charged with being unconstitutional.

In that state, alleges Americans United for Separation of Church and State, inmates in the program have privileges the rest of the prison population does not. The Washington-based watchdog group says the combination of preferential treatment and prayer-filled sessions in a government facility violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

“We’re hoping that … the result of our lawsuit in Iowa would be to stop all publicly funded religious indoctrination in prisons,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United.

The program in dispute is open to inmates who have 18 months or more left in prison. They spend a year in intensive study followed by six months of preparation for the outside world with emphasis on job-seeking and budgeting skills. Once an inmate is released, a mentor continues to work with him for at least six months, helping him connect with a church and a job.

Inmates like Eric Dahlvang of International Falls, Minn., spoke during a recent afternoon class where inmates read two chapters of Philippians verse by verse and talked about the importance of fellowship with God. During a break he said it’s the fellowship with other inmates that’s making a difference for him.


“I need other Christian people to be able to stay near to God,” said Dahlvang, 31, who has 41/2 years left on the sentence he received at age 20 for killing a friend. “I’ve looked back on my life and realized that every time I walked away from God it was because I wasn’t surrounding myself with other Christians. So that’s what I get out of this program. That’s why I came here. And that’s why I have hope for the future after I get out.”

Dahlvang and other inmates at the Minnesota facility are in the newest of the four InnerChange programs. The first opened in Dallas in 1997 and was followed by others in Ellsworth, Kansas and Newton, Iowa.

The Lino Lakes, Minn., program began in July with 37 inmates. The state legislature appropriated $200,000 for its first two years. Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley said he expects ongoing annual funding of the program to consist of $100,000 from the state and $600,000 from private funds.

Prison Fellowship and government officials say church and state are kept separate in the billing process, with government money used for nonsectarian purposes such as furnishings or equipment.

“There is a staff person assigned to review any bills submitted to maintain that separation,” said Shari Burt, spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Kingery said the majority of inmates in the program at the medium-security facility are Christians, but faith is not a requirement for participation.


“I go, of course, and interview them and tell them up front that this is a Christ-centered, Bible-based program and everyone is welcome,” he said of the screening process. “I just want to be clear that they understand the paradigm that we come from. And so you’ll see people of all faiths, of no faith.”

While the lawsuit against the Iowa program focuses on the potential privileges it can provide, Prison Fellowship officials say the intense, busy days of participants mean they have to meet higher standards.

In the four programs, inmates are not allowed to watch television and lose some time for work, recreation and sleep that others may have. They rise by 6 a.m. for devotional readings and spend much of the afternoon and evening in required activities.

Earley denies the suit’s charge that Iowa members of the InnerChange program have private bathroom facilities while others do not.

“Far from privileges, there are a lot more responsibilities and duties in this program and higher expectations,” he said.

He believes the program is constitutional because it is voluntary and because prisoners have the right to religious freedom.


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Stacked with Bibles at the long tables that serve as desks in the Lino Lakes facility are books like “A Strategy for Winning the Battle” and Colson’s “Born Again.” On each table are printed rules, urging inmates to be prompt and encourage each other in their discussions.

Words like “sin” drop off the tongues of these men easily and they call each other “brother” in class. The men dressed mostly in jeans and T-shirts say they’re working on not being boastful and dealing with anger.

Kingery said he and the biblical counselors who work in the program _ and adhere to Prison Fellowship’s evangelical statement of faith _ are “building a Christian worldview” within prison walls that’s based on a “transformational” faith in Jesus.

“We really try to promote an expression of care and concern and we expect that,” said Kingery, who firmly pats an inmate on the shoulder as he heads out of the classroom. “It’s not every man for himself. This is a body of men together that are trying to make life changes.”

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The Texas program, which began with then-Gov. George W. Bush’s approval, has proven effective, according to a report from the state’s Criminal Justice Policy Council. It found that 8 percent of the participants who completed the program returned to prison within two years of their release, compared to 22 percent of offenders who were screened for the program but did not enter it. National recidivism rates tend to range between 60 percent and 70 percent.

Lynn of Americans United said those statistics don’t warrant government funding.

“Good, bad or indifferent, Americans shouldn’t have to pay for people’s religious experiences” he said.


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Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, visited the Lino Lakes facility in March. He waved off the suit as “inevitable” and said its filers differ with Bush on the potential of faith-based programs funded with government money.

“If their vision for a better America is `Well, we’ve got to live with more crime and failed prison programs that don’t rehabilitate anyone’ as a way to make sure that our public square’s sanitized of all religious influence, then that’s not a vision of America President Bush supports,” he said.

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The recidivism statistics are noticed by inmates in the newer Minnesota program, too.

“I like my chances of never coming back,” said Virgil Henderson, a 35-year-old Chicagoan serving 15 years for murder. “I’ve read the studies done on the program. That’s what really drew me to it.”

He said inmates outside the program have their doubts and have criticized his faith walk.

They tell him he’ll be “back to the old ways.” But despite the fact that he will probably return full time to the general population before his release, he thinks they’re wrong.

“I think we all will make it,” said Henderson of his fellow InnerChange inmates.

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