laura-
have you read this:
Florida puts felons in God's big house
By DOUG SAUNDERS
UPDATED AT 11:11 PM EST Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2004
The swampy land between Gainesville and Jacksonville, Fla., used to be known only for alligators, truck stops and trailer parks. Now it has become the launch pad for America's newest institution: the faith-based penitentiary.
Governor Jeb Bush opened the first faith-based prison in the United States a few weeks ago with a characteristically spiritual proclamation to the gathered prisoners: "I can't think of a better place to reflect on the awesome love of our Lord Jesus than to be here at Lawtey Correctional. God bless you."
For the 791 inmates at Lawtey, the reference to Jesus was more than perfunctory. Unlike other wards of the state, they are also expected to be followers of God, in exchange for what most prisoners consider to be more peaceful surroundings and more lenient treatment.
Lawtey Correctional Institute is staffed by more than 500 volunteers from religious groups, most of them Protestant ministries, who provide daily worship services and prayer-based rehabilitation.
Civil-rights groups say it is offensive and unconstitutional to have explicitly religious groups delivering public services, even though the prisoners involved have volunteered. But it appears that Lawtey will be the model for other prisons across the country.
Yesterday, Nashville-based Corrections Corp. of America, the largest operator of privately run prisons in the United States, announced that it has teamed up with the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a Chicago-based church group, to bring full-time religious programs to eight prisons next year. There are plans to expand into all of CCA's 64 institutions.
"We hope to create a culture where inmates can reflect on their spiritual lives," Dennis Bradby, a CCA vice-president, said in a statement yesterday. "Inmates will experience 772 hours of faith-based activities after six months in the program."
CCA executives said they were inspired to launch their program by the Lawtey institution -- and by the $200-million (U.S.) in grants offered by the federal Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, which was created by Mr. Bush's brother, the President.
The prisons are only the most dramatic of the innovations introduced by the Florida Governor, whose state has gone farther than any other in bringing religion into government services.
At a prayer meeting in Tallahassee last month, Mr. Bush announced that he has set up a high-level advisory board to make sure that religious groups get "fair and equitable access to state government."
Every department of the Florida government is now required to have a "faith-based co-ordinator" who is expected to reach out to churches, synagogues and missionary groups and encourage them to make bids to offer government services in exchange for grants from Washington.
The boldest strides have been made in the Department of Children and Families, which administers many of the state's welfare programs. Two years ago, Mr. Bush fired the head of the agency and appointed Jerry Regier, an Oklahoma conservative activist with a master's degree in Bible studies who headed the Christian Family Research Council.
At his behest, Mr. Bush recently announced that $10-million a year will be spent on a "marriage initiative" in which church groups will help provide marriage counselling programs, based on prayer, to reduce the divorce rate.
He has also introduced a program called Character First!, in which government employees are coached in 49 key biblical qualities including deference, virtue, loyalty and meekness. It is modelled after a popular evangelical Christian program called the 49 Commands of Christ.
Florida is also looking at ways to put some state child-care programs into the hands of religious groups.
In fact, Mr. Regier has suggested that government should get out of the social-assistance business entirely and leave it to churches. "It's almost not appropriate for a government official to come and talk to you about need," he told a meeting of pastors in Tampa last month. "You've been the heart and soul of America's conscience for hundreds of years."
Although secular-minded voters and members of Florida's sizable Jewish community may be turned off by such ideas, Republicans believe it will be crucial to persuade as many evangelical Christians as possible to go to the state's polling stations on Nov. 2. Many Republicans believe Mr. Bush's 2000 election victory margin was as narrow as it was only because of poor turnout among Christian conservatives.
Since Florida is believed to be the largest recipient of Washington's faith-based funding, some have charged that the program is little more than a campaign fund.
Jeb Bush, whose religious beliefs are reported to be even more fundamentalist than those of his brother George, has faced fierce criticism from those Floridians who prefer not to have their government services delivered with a prayer. But he has turned these criticisms around, arguing that the U.S. news media are biased against religious groups and that such criticisms are offensive to the faithful.
"There are people who create these egregious stereotypes of people of faith, implying bad motives, not based on fact," he told reporters recently. "There are all sorts of programs where faith-based [organizations] should be at the table. They should not be excluded."
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