International Penal Abolitionists (original) (raw)
April 29, 2006
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2006; A02
The Justice Department plans to set aside cellblocks at up to half a dozen federal prisons for an ambitious pilot program to prepare inmates for release. But it has produced an outcry by saying that it wants a private group to counsel the prisoners according to a single faith.
The plans do not specify what that faith must be, but they appear to rule out secular counseling or programs that offer inmates guidance in a variety of faiths.
The Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State charged in a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons has tailored its bidding requirements to fit one particular program: an immersion in evangelical Christianity offered by Charles W. Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries.
Outlining 10 ways in which the Bureau of Prisons' request for proposals from private contractors dovetails with Prison Fellowship's "InnerChange" program, Americans United contended that the plan is unconstitutional and urged Gonzales to withdraw it. Gonzales has not responded to the April 19 letter, Americans United said.
Independent experts on constitutional law asked by The Washington Post to review the bidding documents also questioned the plan's legality.
"There are all sorts of gray areas in the interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. This doesn't seem to be in the gray area," said Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. "This seems to favor religion over non-religion, and some religions over other religions. By wanting to fund only one religion, I think it runs afoul of what even the most conservative justices would be willing to tolerate."
Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas School of Law said he believes that "you can run religious programs in federal prisons" and that they "are highly promising." But he said the plan for taxpayer-funded counseling in a single faith, without any obvious provision for a secular alternative, is "problematic."
"One of the questions you have to ask is, 'Does the regular prison program do anything comparable to prepare prisoners for reentry?' " Laycock said. "I don't know the answer, but I've read that most prisons don't do much of anything. So in fact there may be no secular equivalent, and if the only way to get preparation for release is to go into a 'single-faith' program, that seems to be coercion of religion."