There are more than 2.1 million prisoners in U.S. jails and prisons.
There are more than 2.1 million prisoners in U.S. jails and prisons.
And, if trends continue, of the nearly 750,000 inmates who are released
each year, two-thirds of them will be arrested again within three years
and approximately half of these individuals will spend more time behind
bars.
A June 2006 report from the National Prison Commission states “what
happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and
prisons.”
The commission notes “disturbing evidence of individual assaults and
patterns of violence” that spill out of those institutions when inmates
more dangerous than when they were first imprisoned are released into
communities.
These reports not only paint a dismal picture for lawbreakers, but naturally alarm the general public.
Americans by and large are in favor of “rehabilitative services for
[non-violent] prisoners as opposed to a punishment only system,”
reports an April 2006 Zogby poll. Americans acknowledge that the penal
system, as it exists today, is failing both prisoners and society as it
creates more victims every year.
“Americans have looked at the 30-year experiment on getting tough with
offenders and decided that it is no longer working,” said Barry
Krisberg of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in a June 7,
2006, ABC online news story. In fact, inmates awaiting release from
prison are more likely acquiring antisocial attitudes and skills than
being prepared to reengage society in a productive manner.
Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, once was known as the bloodiest
prison in the South. But today, the maximum-security prison, reportedly
the biggest in the country, is a different place.
Under the direction of warden Burl Cain, Angola is now a model for other corrections officials.
Cain, a Southern Baptist, has instituted a “model moral rehabilitation
philosophy” in the prison. He says moral rehabilitation is really the
only rehabilitation there is. The prison is even sending missionaries,
graduates of the facility’s in-house Bible college overseen by New
Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, to other prisons in Louisiana.
There is more than anecdotal evidence that faith-programs reduce the
likelihood that an inmate will return to prison. A 2003 University of
Pennsylvania study demonstrated that prisoners who participated in a
faith-based program developed by the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice and Prison Fellowship ministries were “significantly less
likely” to be re-arrested or incarcerated.
Yet such programs have earned the ire of strict church-state
separatists who allege the government is dabbling in the forbidden
business of promoting one religion over another when it allows even a
voluntary faith-based initiative a place in prison life.
A federal court judge ruled recently that a faith-based program in a
Midwest prison was unconstitutional, calling it nothing more than
“intensive religious indoctrination.”
There is no question that a sincere belief in a transcendent power who
exercises authority over you and bears Truth with a capital “T” changes
one’s life—for good. Rehabilitation programs that are based on this
reality are bound to effect dramatic, long-lasting changes in the lives
of inmates, especially when compared to traditional rehab programs that
offer only short-term results.
While the experts struggle with the notion of prison reform, it is no
surprise the most effective way to deal with the dismal state of
American prisons is actually prisoner reformation.