Abstract
It is not a new idea that the life of even the worst prisoner can be transformed. Clergy and religious practitioners have proclaimed this message as long as prisons have existed. In recent years, however, there has been considerable interest going beyond traditional prison ministry, to establishing faith-based prison programs, dorms, or even entire faith-based prisons. One of the rationales for the emphasis on faith-based prison interventions is the common criticism that traditional prison programs are simply not effective in rehabilitating inmates or helping former prisoners become law-abiding citizens once they are released back into society. There is preliminary empirical evidence that regular participation in volunteer-led Bible studies is associated with reductions in recidivism. If participation in relatively small doses of religious programs can have a measurable and beneficial effect on inmates, what might be the effect of an extended faith-based prison program? Drawing largely from the experience of several faith-based prison programs, a much more intensive religious intervention has been implemented in several prisons in the United States and around the world. This chapter will summarize the preliminary evidence supporting the beneficial impact of a uniquely faith-based approach to offender treatment and aftercare.
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Notes
- 1.
Religion and crime: Assessing the role of the faith factor. Contemporary Issues in Criminogical Theory and Research – The Role of Social Institutions. Papers from the American Society of Criminology 2010 Conference. Presidential Panel Series.
- 2.
It is important to acknowledge that a systematic review does not carry the same weight as a meta-analysis, where effect sizes for individual studies are considered in the overall assessment of research literature under consideration.
- 3.
PF is the largest organized prison ministry in the United States. According to Prison Fellowship’s most recent Annual Report, the ministry is supported by the efforts of over 300,000 volunteers. Some 200,000 prisoners per month, participate in either Bible studies or seminars led by PF-trained volunteers in over 1,300 of the country’s 1,850 state and federal correctional facilities (see God at work in prison fellowship. Annual Report Fiscal Year 2001–2002, Prison Fellowship Ministries, 44180 Riverside Parkway, Lansdowne, VA 20176 (http://www.prisonfellowship.org).
- 4.
Prison Fellowship identifies itself as a not-for-profit, volunteer-reliant ministry whose mission is to “exhort, equip, and assist the Church in its ministry to prisoners, ex-prisoners, victims, and their families, and to promote biblical standards of justice in the criminal justice system.”
- 5.
From the TDCJ Feasibility Study for monitoring and tracking participants in “IFI.”
- 6.
Several existing programs, as well as new programs, were subsequently identified as meeting this legislative goal: In-Prison Therapeutic Community, Pre-Release Therapeutic Community, Pre-Release Substance Abuse Treatment, and the Sex Offender Treatment Program.
- 7.
Prison Fellowship was awarded the contract after responding to a competitive grant solicitation from TDCJ.
- 8.
Finding Common Ground: 29 Recommendations of the Working Group on Human Needs and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Search for Common Ground: Washington, DC, 2002.
- 9.
See www.ifiprison.org.
- 10.
The primary focus of the CJPC evaluation would be to examine if these programs, including IFI, were able to reduce recidivism. The CJPC was an official Texas agency independent of TDCJ or other criminal justice agencies and existed from 1983 to 2003. The CJPC evaluation of the IFI program and can be accessed at: http://web.archive.org/web/20030705113355/http://cjpc.state.tx.us/reports/adltrehab/IFIInitiative.pdf.
- 11.
Because of my track record in publishing scholarly research examining the impact of religion and spiritual commitment in relation to delinquency, criminality, prisoner adjustment, and recidivism, PF approached me and I subsequently agreed to conduct a second independent evaluation of IFI.
- 12.
A fourth area in need of reform, changing prison release and revocation practices, is a reform presently beyond IFI’s authority.
- 13.
In order to protect the identity of mentors, volunteers, staff, or prisoners, pseudonyms are used in the dialogue.
- 14.
Victim-Offender Mediation Programs (VOMP), also known as Victim-Offender Reconciliation Programs (VORP) is a restorative justice approach that bring offenders face-to-face with the victims of their crimes with the assistance of a trained mediator, usually a community volunteer. Crime is personalized as offenders learn the human consequences of their actions, and victims (who may be ignored by the criminal justice system) have the opportunity to speak their minds and their feelings to the one who most ought to hear them, contributing to the healing process of the victim. Offenders take meaningful responsibility for their actions by mediating a restitution agreement with the victim, to restore the victims’ losses, in whatever ways that may be possible. Restitution may be monetary or symbolic; it may consist of work for the victim, community service or anything else that creates a sense of justice between the victim and the offender. For more information on victim-offender reconciliation go to: http://vorp.com/
- 15.
To make it even more of a long shot, sex offenders and inmates convicted of murder were no longer accepted into the program shortly after Flowers entered the InnerChange Freedom Initiative.
- 16.
Conversation taking place on July 26 and 28, 2010.
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Johnson, B.R. (2012). Spiritual Transformation and Prisoner Rehabilitation in Brazil and the United States. In: Jeynes, W., Robinson, D. (eds) International Handbook of Protestant Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2387-0_23
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