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FAITH-BASED PERSPECTIVES ON THE PROVISION

OF COMMUNITY SERVICES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 16, 2003

Serial No. 108–60

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS BELL, Texas

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

PETER SIRH, Staff Director

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Deputy Staff Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHILIP M. SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

CHRIS BELL, Texas

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

CHRISTOPHER DONESA, Staff Director

ELIZABETH MEYER, Professional Staff Member

NICOLE GARRETT, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 16, 2003 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Kirk, Onnie, director, the Family Foundation Fund, Nashville, TN; and

John Lanz, Corrections Corp. of America, Nashville, TN ......................... 35

Pitts, Paige, founder, New Hope Academy, Franklin, TN; and Rev. Scott

Rowley and Rev. Denny Denson, Empty Hands Fellowship, Franklin,

TN .................................................................................................................. 11

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Blackburn, Hon. Marsha, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Tennessee, prepared statement of ........................................................... 9

Kirk, Onnie, director, the Family Foundation Fund, Nashville, TN, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 39

Pitts, Paige, founder, New Hope Academy, Franklin, TN, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 14

Rowley, Rev. Scott, and Rev. Denny Denson, Empty Hands Fellowship,

Franklin, TN, prepared statement of .......................................................... 21

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 5

(1)

FAITH-BASED PERSPECTIVES ON THE

PROVISION OF COMMUNITY SERVICES

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND

HUMAN RESOURCES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Franklin, TN.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 8:43 a.m., in the

Franklin City Commission Chambers, Franklin, TN, Hon. Mark

Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder and Blackburn.

Staff present: Elizabeth Meyer, professional staff member and

counsel; and Nicole Garrett, clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will come to order. Good morning, and thank you all for coming. It is a pleasure to join my colleague, Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, here in Franklin, to

discuss what characteristics make faith-based providers especially

effective at serving the needs of their communities. She has already

made great contributions to our subcommittee and to Congress, so

I very much appreciate the opportunity to be with her here today

in Tennessee.

Many people toil away day in and day out in our communities

trying to help those who are less fortunate. For these workers,

service is not simply a 9-to-5 job, but a calling. They know that

there is a need in their community and they are compelled to help.

By doing so, they have been making a difference that cannot be denied. I have had the opportunity to visit many faith-based organizations, and time and time again have heard the testimony of men

and women who have seen their lives transformed thanks to the

love and support they received from volunteers and leaders in the

faith community.

At a minimum, government must not only allow, but should demand, that the best resources this Nation possesses be targeted to

help those of us who face the greatest daily struggles. We must embrace new approaches and foster new collaborations to improve

upon existing social programs. We know that as vast as its resources are, the Federal Government simply cannot adequately address all of society’s needs. Services provided by faith-based organizations are by no means the only way to reach all people in need.

Rather, they offer a unique dimension to that service—a corps of

people motivated, in many cases, by their faith, who are ready,

willing and able to help their neighbors around the clock. I believe

that we cannot begin to address the many and diverse social deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:33 Nov 14, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89770.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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mands of our Nation without the help of grassroots faith and community initiatives in every city across the country, and I am looking forward to seeing the many successes here in Franklin.

A recognition that faith-based organizations are competently filling a gap in community services has led to legislation and regulations that encourage these organizations to become more involved

in their communities, through both action by Congress and the

leadership of President Bush. One example is seen down the road

in Memphis, where a pilot program has been implemented through

the Department of Labor. This program will develop a model curriculum of cooperation between the local Workforce Investment

Board and faith-based and community groups that can be adopted

by other cities across the country to help people in the workplace

and with jobs.

Charitable choice provisions have allowed faith-based organizations to compete for government grants on the same basis as secular providers so that they can reach more people in need. As we

expand that involvement, we must fully consider the specific characteristics and methods that make faith-based groups successful at

transforming lives. Today we will hear from organizations that provide care to children, addicts, prison inmates and the community

as a whole. We need to understand how the unique element of faith

impacts the structure and success of these programs. It is also important that we understand how your programs transform lives by

building self-confidence and self-esteem.

Our witnesses today represent just a fraction of the countless

faith-based organizations around Tennessee that are raising the

bar for the quality of services they are providing to their communities. I expect that our witnesses today will provide valuable insights on the provision of social services, and where the government can best assist community organizations of all types provide

the best possible care for people in need. And I look very much forward to the testimony.

I would like to add a few comments in context to what we are

doing today in Franklin and what we are doing with our committee. I represent northeast Indiana in Congress. And years ago, one

of my friends I helped elect, Dan Quayle, and then his aide, Dan

Coats got elected to Congress, and when Coats became the senior

Republican on the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and

Families in the 1980’s, it became apparent to us that the pressing

problems in our society were never going to be met with just the

increasing Federal budgets. In other words, when you look at the

caseloads of probation officers, the challenges we face in our prisons, the challenges we face in child abuse and spouse abuse, with

the homeless, with treating people with AIDS, that the government

expenditures were not going to keep up, no matter which party was

in charge, in any State, any community or the national level, with

the nature of the problems. So how were we going to tackle this.

Dan Coats in the House came up with a thing called the American Family Act in the 1980’s. When he went to the Senate, it became the agenda for American renewal. I was his legislative director there. We started some of the first faith-based initiatives in

HUD that dealt with homeless and with AIDS where there were

not these political controversies because really nobody would get inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:33 Nov 14, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89770.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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volved in the early AIDS cases except for faith-based people, because everybody was afraid they were going to catch AIDS.

And in the homeless area, there were not nearly enough people

to treat and help the people on the streets, so nobody was objecting

to faith-based organizations becoming involved. The person who

wrote much of this for Dan Coats, in his speeches and so on, is a

man named Mike Gerson, who now is the chief speech writer for

President Bush, and has developed much of this type of concept as

well as a number of the other individuals who worked with us in

the late 1980’s and 1990’s and other staff such as Les Lenkowsky,

who now heads Americorps, and others have moved up in the system and about 5 years ago when the Republicans took over Congress, we started to pass what were called Charitable Choice provisions in the different bills. Senator Coats, in his last term, had one

in the welfare bill, which was the first big initiative in Charitable

Choice, Senator Ashcroft was its cosponsor in the Senate, and I

carried in the House side through conference committee.

Since then, I have been the person who has had about four or

five of those amendments in Juvenile Justice and the Fatherhood

Initiative and others. We just went through another one on the

floor, arguing with that. Some others have been in and out of that,

Congressman is still there active, J.C. Watts who has since retired,

Roy Blunt and Harold Ford are coming up with the new variation

of the Charitable Choice.

But what became apparent as we got into the side arguments

with Charitable Choice is that we were losing the primary argument, which is why were we trying to argue for the faith-based

groups to get involved in the first place. So in this subcommittee,

which Congresswoman Blackburn is part of, here in her first term,

we have oversight, but we have authorizing on narcotics legislation. So about half of our committee staff deals with drug policy,

which drug treatment is one of the major areas we are plunging

into. We have also oversight and some authorizing on things related to the Justice Department. Elizabeth Meyer works full time or

almost full time on this faith-based project. And we decided in this

2-year term, one of the things we were going to try to do is to put

together a report like we did on the borders that has been a

premise report for the Homeland Security Committee on studying

our border weaknesses and what we have to do to trade and so on.

We want to do a similar thing for faith-based, so we are doing a

series of regional hearings around the country; this being kind of

central south, we will probably do one next year in Florida, we will

do one in Los Angeles. We have one scheduled that was canceled

that is coming up again in San Antonio for the southwest, we are

doing one in Chicago in August and one later this fall either in

Philadelphia or Boston. And that is in addition to the Washington

hearings. Our first one there, we raised it inside drug treatment.

We are moving the reauthorization bill and the administration has

directly, through an administrative action in drug treatment, ordered the inclusion of faith-based.

So we will be continuing to watch that. We will have a number

of Washington debates about some of the policy. But what we want

to try to do is find organizations that are tackling different problems in each region of the country and also get written testimony

4

and names of other organizations and build the case that, look, we

cannot tackle the problems without the faith-based and other community organizations and we need to figure out how we are going

to work this together, because that is the only way that we can

begin to face the problems.

So I appreciate you being a part of that. We need to illustrate—

let me make this point too. One of the advantages to testimony and

why it is important that we are going to get testimony from rural

areas, from small towns, from suburban areas and urban areas, the

most concentrated problems are urban, but that does not mean

there are not social problems in the whole range. And one of the

things that is a criticism of faith-based from some is that there are

only a few of these programs that really work and they are big programs and they are just concentrated in a couple of places.

I believe there are thousands and tens of thousands of these programs, some of which are very small and which have structural

problems on how to manage, how to fundraise. Some are medium

sized and some are large and very urban poor areas that are predominantly resource challenged, because the problems are so great

that they simply—and the assets are more in the suburban areas

and there they have a different resource challenge, rather than a

people challenge or a management structure challenge.

So we want to air some of those differences and at the same

show that this is not just a case of faith-based people like myself

in Congress holding up my Aunt Annie and saying, oh, I know a

program in my district that is really good. We want to show that

all across America, this is systematic and something that we need

to look at how we integrate into the fabric and acknowledge it is

part of the fabric and the tradition of the United States.

With that, I would like to yield to my distinguished colleague,

Congresswoman Blackburn, and thank you very much for having

us in your hometown.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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7

8

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you

for bringing the Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal

Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources to Franklin to look at

the success of faith-based and community organizations in providing social services. In communities all across Tennessee, there are

groups like the ones that we have testifying here today that help

the homeless, counsel at-risk youth, assist the elderly and help

drug addicts recover. In Tennessee, we are known as the volunteer

State and we all take pride in contributing and giving back to our

communities.

Congress can play a role in assisting these organizations by providing more incentives for individuals to financially support them.

Mr. Chairman, it will not be a surprise to anybody here in this audience today that the type of incentives I am talking about come

in the form of tax reform. Recently, our Majority Whip, Roy Blunt,

introduced H.R. 7, the Charitable Giving Act, which will expand

the resources available to these groups by providing 86 million

Americans who do not itemize on their tax returns the opportunity

to deduct a portion of their charitable contributions. Mr. Chairman,

I would not be true to my State legislative roots if I did not point

out that I am also working in Washington to once again allow for

the deductibility of State sales taxes, but that is something we will

do at a different hearing. H.R. 7 will also provide incentives for individuals to make tax-free contributions to charities from their

IRAs, their Individual Retirement Accounts, and raise the cap on

corporate charitable contributions from 10 to 20 percent. I am

proud to be a cosponsor of the legislation and it is my hope that

Congress considers it soon.

Faith-based and community groups have a unique approach and

ability to improve the lives of people. However, there is little research that has been done into why these groups are so effective

at their mission. President Bush has articulated his vision for

strengthening that partnership between the Federal Government

and those faith-based and community groups that provide compassionate care and produce impressive results. Mr. Chairman, today

in Franklin, TN, we are going to hear from groups that produce

these results, that produce success stories, and learn why these

groups are so good at what they do.

I want to thank Paige Pitts from New Hope Academy, Pastor

Rowley and Pastor Denson from Empty Hands, Onnie Kirk from

the Family Foundation and John Lanz from Corrections Corporation of America, Robert Flores from Lighthouse Outreach Ministries for being here and for testifying today before this committee.

Thank you for the work you do and I look forward to hearing the

testimony from each of you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Marsha Blackburn follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Let me first take care of a couple of pieces of committee business.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days

to submit written statements and questions for the hearing record

and any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses

also be included in the record. Without objection, so ordered.

I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents and

other materials referred to by Members and the witnesses may be

included in the hearing record; that all Members be permitted to

revise and extend their remarks. Without objection, it is so ordered.

I would like to welcome our first panel to come to the witness

table and to remain standing. Our first panel consists of organizations that are based here in Franklin. Paige Pitts with the New

Hope Academy, Pastors Denny Denson and Scott Rowley with

Empty Hands Fellowship if you could come forward and remain

standing. Just a side note, Paige, your father-in-law has been a tremendous voice for family values in the House and in fact was one

of the earlier ones, I went up with several of my staff members the

first time he held a conference in Lancaster, PA for faith-based organizations on how to approach the government, what laws and

regulations there are, and we repeatedly looked at how to do models like that for other members because he has implemented that.

I need to give you the oath. If you will raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Go ahead and take a seat. This is an oversight committee, most famous probably for when the Republicans first took

over, we did everything from the travel office investigation to Waco

to where were the missing files, who hired Craig Livingstone—all

sorts of that type of thing and we were in the news for basically

4 years. That is why we are the only committee that does an oath.

We are also the only committee that can subpoena e-mails and all

that sort of thing, because our job is to make sure that the laws

passed by Congress are implemented. So you are now part of that

tradition, along with all these other people, 125 people fled the

country or took the fifth amendment rather than do what you just

did. So we appreciate that you have joined us.

We are going to start with Paige.

STATEMENTS OF PAIGE PITTS, FOUNDER, NEW HOPE ACADEMY, FRANKLIN, TN; AND REV. SCOTT ROWLEY AND REV.

DENNY DENSON, EMPTY HANDS FELLOWSHIP, FRANKLIN,

TN

Ms. PITTS. Good morning, Congresswoman Blackburn; good

morning, Congressman Souder; thank you for having me and the

opportunity to share about New Hope Academy this morning.

New Hope Academy is a school, pre-kindergarten through the

sixth grade, serving 144 students here in Franklin. We just completed our 7th year.

In the beginning, about 10 years ago or 12 years ago, I had the

privilege of getting involved in the urban communities here in

Franklin, those that live in government housing and in neighborhoods that are deemed poverty level. And from being in the courtrooms and being in their homes and being on the street and getting

involved in their lives and their families, beginning tutoring proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:33 Nov 14, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89770.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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grams and Bible studies and ministry to teen moms, we began to

see that so much of our effort that was involving crisis intervention

could only carry so much weight and could only make so much impact. And that is where we began to dream about starting a school

that could truly impact—spending 5 days a week, 8 hours a day,

in the lives of these children and, therefore, in the lives of these

families. To see the opportunity to get involved in prevention, to

see how we can help reform—begin at an earlier stage than trying

to figure out how to fix something that is broken, how can we help

empower something before it gets broken.

So that is kind of the context or the historical context with which

New Hope Academy began. It was in the beginning our intention

to be a school that would serve low income families, that they too,

children of all economic means, would have the opportunity to receive faith-based or Christ-centered education that educated the

whole child, that it was not just a program that focused on academics but we could look into the hearts and minds of these children

and begin to love and serve them spiritually, emotionally, physically as well as intellectually. And so that is our goal, is to be able

to really involve ourselves in the lives of these children.

At the same time, when we began thinking about starting this

school, we did not want to be a school that just was an inner-city

school and that you have the segregation occur again—your more

wealthy, upper middle class schools at one place, at one part of the

city, and then you have your inner-city schools. So we really asked

God to show us how to do something that really was more reflective of our community racially, culturally and economically and

really was more reflective of the God that we serve.

And so we intentionally began with 50 percent of our students

coming from low income families and 50 percent coming from middle or upper middle class families. We believe that community of

students and parents and community, that there is a richer education because it is not only the poor that need us and our resources, but we need the poor and their resources whom God has

entrusted in them. So we feel very blessed to have a very unique

student population and community at New Hope, very different

than most schools I have seen around the country, because we do

focus on all children and seeing that rich diversity.

In order to really, hopefully, impact these students’ lives longterm, we have kept our class size to only 12 students in the classroom pre-K through second grade and 14 students third grade

through sixth grade, a very small, nurturing, tutorial approach in

the classroom. We have a very rigorous, comprehensive academic

approach, it is a classical approach. We begin studying Latin in

third grade that extends all the way through sixth grade ready for

Latin II when they enter middle school. And to have a strong academic base that will help give them the skills to break that cycle

of poverty.

But we are not naive enough to think that it is through the academic approach only that these children will really escape some of

the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead. And so, because of

the low class ratio, we are able to really nurture the students as

well. We really see our teachers as disciplers, really discipling

these children, and so for children that come who are wounded,

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who are emotionally devastated, for children who have so many

challenges that they cannot even begin to think about doing math

or science or humanities because of what is happening in their

lives, we have the opportunity to serve them and to hopefully counsel and disciple and deal with their hearts what is going on in their

lives, so that they can then receive the academic excellence that

they too deserve.

We offer scholarships to our children, but at the same time, we

make sure that every family pays something to be at New Hope

Academy, that the family values the choice that they are making

for their child, and that they too are making it possible for their

child, it is not just the school giving scholarships, it is the family

saying I can at least give this much tuition every month in order

for my child to receive this education. So it is a community partnership effort.

We are really committed to seeing community relationships as

well as the academic success. And I would say, as far as our impact

in the community, we are a young school, we have only been in existence 7 years, for us to see the large impact, I look forward to

20, 30 years from now, but the impact that we are seeing today,

again, goes so far beyond seeing these children’s minds and academics be encouraged and grow. We have seen students become

very diligent in their academic work, they are becoming lovers of

learning that as they continue through the journey of New Hope

Academy, that they are excited about learning and about growing.

And I believe that is one area that will help them from being dropouts and not having vision.

So ultimately our goal, through equality, through community,

through parental involvement and through classical education, it is

our hope and desire to see these children have vision for their lives,

that they see themselves being able to do whatever God has called

them to do, whatever the purpose of their life is, that they are

equipped spiritually and emotionally, socially, intellectually, physically to be able to go and fulfill their dream and to have a vision

beyond maybe what they see in their own circumstances.

I can stop there and if you have any questions, or if you want

me to go on further.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Pitts follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. The committee rules, which today will

be a little flexible with our 5 minutes. I understand that the two

of you are going to kind of work as a tag team here and work

through, so when the red light comes on—and for the other witnesses too—do not panic, you know, go through the points. And

also, as you heard me say, in the record if there are things that

you hear us talk about today and you think, oh, I would like to

have that put in the record, one of the things we are doing is that

at each hearing gets published as a little book. So if there are other

groups or people that want to submit things, but also if you hear

things stimulated, for example on the second panel and you say oh,

I would like to put something in on that, or types of questions that

you hear me or Congresswoman Blackburn asking, that you think

oh, I could put some more written materials in; this is an opportunity to build a record which will probably be the only comprehensive record on faith-based. I am in my 9th year in Congress and

I was a staffer for both the House and Senate and in grand total,

there has probably only been five other hearings, maybe six, on the

subject. So the record we are building here will be the predominant

researcher record. So I wanted to put that in about additional information.

Mr. Denson, you want to go ahead?

Rev. DENSON. Good morning, Chairman; good morning Congresswoman Blackburn, I am Pastor Denson, I pastor the First Missionary Baptist Church here in Franklin, TN and I am a part of the

Empty Hands Fellowship.

Rev. ROWLEY. And I am Scott Rowley and I am associate pastor

for missions and outreach at Christ Community Church, Presbyterian Church in America; and since we are representing Empty

Hands Fellowship together, we requested that we could testify together.

Rev. DENSON. The Empty Hands Fellowship is a group here in

Franklin that is cross racial, cross economical and cross denominational boundaries. It was formulated to build relationships to bring

about diversity.

Rev. ROWLEY. What we find is that in faith-based work, much of

the southern church is still segregated, which is obviously historically linked. So this is a statement and in a sense a demonstration

for the last 8 years of clergy and lay people coming together so the

church desires to be together, come together, integrated at this

level. And I think it is one of the strengths of the ministry.

What happens is that we meet together and we pray together

and the intention is to see the needs of the people coming from the

pastors of the churches and as that flow happens, we get to know

folks who are in need and then we support a number of, and a variety of, faith-based ministries and initiatives here in the city of

Franklin that extends to Williamson County.

There is a law office—in fact, I think we have one of the representatives, the executive director, of the Jericho Community Law

Office, which works on behalf of those that do not have a voice in

our legal system.

We have a Store-House Ministry that runs out of the Franklin

Community Center, which is a block away from here, where walk

up traffic, up to 30 people a month, with everything from their

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light bill that is needed, to educating their children, also a variety

of needs.

The Eagles Program, which is an after-school tutoring program.

Habitat for Humanity is housed in that same community center

and their remarkable work here in Williamson County has been

well-documented.

And also some international work that I think is interesting. The

African leadership and our refugee resettlement work here in middle Tennessee—as you may or may not know, Nashville is one of

the largest resettlement communities for refugees in the world, and

in the North American continent, and we are glad to be a part of

the work that is going on there, as well as the international side

of that.

Schools like New Hope Academy that have spawned, classical

education and even right now, three schools in northern Iraq,

which are—it is a very powerful movement to see how it works

from here really even at the international community.

Rev. DENSON. And also spun out of the Empty Hands Fellowship

is the Mercy Children’s Clinic. It is one of the few clinics in middle

Tennessee that still accepts TennCare. We have people come from

as far away as Knoxville, TN, just because of the fact that they do

still accept TennCare.

They serve somewhere in the neighborhood of about 80 or 90 people a day, they have got two doctors who are well qualified there.

That organization or that clinic spun out of the Empty Hands Fellowship.

We do a lot of street ministering for those who are

disenfranchised, those who are on alcohol and drugs. We are able

to send people to—because of the fact that there is not a rehabilitation clinic resource here in Williamson County, we partnered with

some places in Nashville where we are able to send those who are

chemically dependent. It too is faith-based, because I am a firm believer that you can treat your addiction, but if you do not treat the

whole person—and this is what faith-based initiatives do, it treats

the whole person. It is concerned about the whole person, not just

the sickness, but the person himself. And that happens when you

are able to speak into a person’s life, when you are able to not just

work with them, but become a part of who they are, you become

a part of their lives. This is really what I think faith-based initiatives are absolutely.

Rev. ROWLEY. We are involved with housing through neighborhood renewal programs and we develop programs. And as Denny

has mentioned, alcohol and drug rehab. Part of what we are excited

about also is that we demonstrate this literally, just as relationship. For instance, myself and Denny could not be more different

as people.

Rev. DENSON. Right.

Rev. ROWLEY. In our culture today, we would never really mix

it up, which we find sinful, we find that wrong. So the intention

is to say why are we not moving toward people who are very different than we are—economically, denominationally and certainly

racially. And part of the strength of this fellowship is that 50 or

more now lay leaders and clergy meet together in order to demonstrate that to our people. And what we are developing through

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that demonstration is really the relationships that have spawned

the needs that we are able to address.

Rev. DENSON. One of the things that has happened recently is

that an innovative way through the court systems, through the justice system, in dealing with those who are first time offenders who

are not violent offenders, working with them, they are being released to the Empty Hands Fellowship that we might be able to

work with them and speak some things into their lives.

Rev. ROWLEY. Creative probation is a great way for us to be a

part of the problem—solving the problems that come to the system.

We know, for instance, that alcoholism is often treated as a crime

versus something that is a sickness and an illness that needs to be

healed. And so we are very in tune with and desiring to be a part

of the kind of work that can help with those particular needs.

We also want to make sure that you are understanding that

what we find of grant-funded social services, that they are very important. We cooperate with 100 such services right here in middle

Tennessee. However, as Denny has said, what we find is that they

deal with the problem rather than the relationship with the person.

We feel government has resources, we feel Empty Hands Fellowship has relationships. When those two come together, it is a very

powerful thing. We would not want to see this as some opportunity

for us to proselytize. We are not interested in making people religious people. We are interested in seeing how God, who has called

us to work among the poor and the needy—how that then has impact as we couple the two.

It is exciting for us to be here to see this kind of movement. We

feel very definitely that this will be a help to our community.

Rev. DENSON. Because with faith-based initiatives, I am a firm

believer that you end up building life-long relationships and what

Paige said about the school. You have some children there from different economic and different social backgrounds that will build relationships that will last a lifetime. So this is what faith-based initiatives will do, they build relationships. It is not once the problem

or your sickness is taken care of, you are on your way, but you are

building life-long relationships and this is what faith-based initiative is all about, because we are driven by the Gospel.

Rev. ROWLEY. One such group that we work with is the ERACE

Foundation, the director John McGuire. In fact, Congressman

Blackburn was a part of the race that we had, literally a go-cart

race here, a great opportunity for people to come out and support

one another and to get to know one another, just to relate, but also

the needs that came out of those types of events or come out of

those events give us special needs to address.

So these sound like kind of high and imperial kind of ideas, but

they really are on the ground literally, day to day. It’s our lives

commitment. Denny and I are committed to each other as long as

the Lord gives us breath and as long as we are here. That is our

commitment and I think that is what faith-based work in a sense

does, because it is based on a commitment that our God has made

to us. We believe Christ relocated to heaven to be among us, to

dwell among us, to be with us. That is the sign of true love, that

we would lay our lives down for one another. That does not come

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through a government program, it really comes from a heart that

has changed.

Rev. DENSON. And when Scott said myself and him, we are not

omitting the Empty Hands Fellowship, because if it be not for the

Empty Hands Fellowship, we would not have the relationship that

we have now. So faith-based initiatives are driven by relationships.

I think faith-based initiatives are driven by compassion and this is

the difference I think between other organizations that are not

faith-based. They are driven by compassion, they are driven by relationships. It is through relationships that I think you can get the

better job done because of the compassion that you have.

Rev. ROWLEY. One of the supportive programs that President

Bush spoke of when he was here for the NRB was the idea of allowing a drug addict or someone who is addicted to have access to

a voucher that allowed them to go to the group that was actually

where they wanted to be fixed, where they wanted to be healed,

where they felt like they could get the best deal. We find that extremely attractive because what it would say is that those that

really do care and are working diligently out of calling, they will

see a success record and—they will be successful in ways that others that do not see that as their calling may not be as successful.

Again, we are not putting down those that are a part of social

services, it is a huge issue and an important issue, but we do think

that kind of a system could be very valuable.

Rev. DENSON. I have been a member of DDC or was member of

DDC for a long time, the Dangerous Drug Commission, when I

worked with those who are chemically dependent in Chicago and

it was not faith-based at that time. But in being involved with a

faith-based initiative, I see that faith-based is the way to go. The

success rates are higher because of the mentoring of the relationships program.

In the other social program, what happens is that once you have

completed the program, you are basically kind of on your own. But

the faith-based initiatives are there for nurturing, they are there

for caring for a lifetime because of the relationships that are built.

[The prepared statement of Rev. Denson and Rev. Rowley follows:]

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22

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. I think that the way we will

start the questioning is I want to lay out a little bit, through some

questions, the context, and then I will yield to Congresswoman

Blackburn for some questions and then I will come back with some

more particular.

Both for my information and also for the record, so we kind of

understand, I think we need to get some basic data and background in about where we are in the particular challenges.

Franklin is a city of how big?

Rev. ROWLEY. We are approaching 40,000 citizens.

Mr. SOUDER. And it looked like the Nashville suburbs were coming pretty close here.

Rev. ROWLEY. Our county, Williamson County has 110,000 people

in it, we are a direct bedroom community to them. Brentwood separates Nashville from Franklin.

Mr. SOUDER. What is the historical percentage in this county of

African-American persons?

Rev. ROWLEY. In 1865, there were 12,000 African-Americans who

were enslaved in Williamson County. Now approximately 8,000 African-Americans live in the county.

Mr. SOUDER. And is that changing as you have the Nashville

suburbs come down? Has the percent declined as a percent?

Rev. DENSON. Yes, because of lack of affordable housing.

Mr. SOUDER. So the income disparities have, to some degree become greater.

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Have you had an influx of Hispanic population as

well?

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. It approaching half the size of the African-American

community or greater?

Rev. DENSON. About a third.

Rev. ROWLEY. Yeah, I would say a third.

Mr. SOUDER. What would be the other major refugee communities that have come into the Franklin area?

Rev. ROWLEY. We work with a group from the Kurdish—that is

how our connection with northern Iraq really happened, through

Kurdish refugees in south Nashville. We also have some student

from Somalia—we have a Somalian refugee group, families that

are—actually, they are orphans and children refugees from Somalia and we have seen them in our care as well.

Mr. SOUDER. My personal belief is that the most extraordinary

thing that has been changing since I have been—I have been interested in politics since I was a kid, but heretofore, you would look

at Central America. Northern Indiana is probably about the most

isolationist area of America. Nashville area in Tennessee probably

is not too far behind, in the sense that we are right in the heartland, lots of controversy about international issues, lots of controversy about trade issues, all that type of thing, even about

whether to go to World War II.

I always say my District had a lot of diversity—north Germans,

central Germans and south Germans. [Laughter.]

But we have changed really dramatically. I now have the largest

dissident Burmese population in the United States, 2,000 have

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come in because legislators came in, parliamentarians and national

student groups. So again on Friday, I had all kinds of protests outside my office about Federal policies. That is a whole new variable

in the last 3 years that has come in. Largest population of Macedonian Americans. So all of a sudden, I wound up in the middle of

the Balkan argument.

So each member and each city have slightly different things. We

have one high school with 83 different dialects in it. So all of a sudden, I have a group of 100 Sudanese who want to meet with me,

I did not know I had any Sudanese in Fort Wayne.

So these challenges are really difficult in the faith-based area

and that is why I am going to be asking these questions at each

hearing, because traditionally when we started with the concept of

the Federal programs and as we worked in the empowerment

zones, we were historically looking—and it is still a critical and

large component—in the African-American urban and rural poor.

We now have a whole new dynamic, and some of the immigrant

groups come in and move rapidly through the system; others get

stuck, they do not have the historic component of slavery and the

historic discrimination, although every group gets discrimination

when they first come in. Thus, the background of my questions.

Do you have language challenges in your group?

Rev. DENSON. One of the things that makes the Empty Hands

Fellowship so unique is that we have a whole cross section of the

community—we have Hispanic pastors, we have brothers that are

part of the Empty Hands Fellowship from Africa, you know, and

so this is what makes us so unique, we are able to address most

of those problems.

Rev. ROWLEY. We do have language, in terms of Spanish. The

Sudanese and others that are here, those present particular problems as well. But I would say our biggest struggle is the lack of

Spanish.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you explain a little the differences between

your Franklin and your Nashville operations and what the challenge differences and the population mix, your outreach mix, or are

they similar?

Rev. DENSON. Smaller but similar, I would say. We just do not

have from the population perspective, but we would have the same

problems.

Mr. SOUDER. And is the lower income population in this area, do

you have—is it fairly dispersed or does it tend to be concentrated?

Rev. DENSON. Concentrated in a few pockets.

Rev. ROWLEY. Seven, six or seven neighborhoods comprise probably 90 percent of our disadvantaged.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have in this county or in immediate counties beyond, do you have rural poor as well and would that be—

one of the things that is different—you are from Chicago and you

know this difference from the north.

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Our poor in the cities tends to be minority, our poor

in the rural areas tends to be white.

Rev. DENSON. That is right.

Mr. SOUDER. In the south, that is not necessarily true. Could you

describe that a little bit.

25

Rev. ROWLEY. Well, I would say that is, in the sense that what

we are constantly battling is not confusing ethnicity with economics. There are low income and rural white poor and we need to always be careful with that and that is something we are addressing.

I wanted to make a correction, I was handed this. In terms of

Williamson County, 91 percent, 91.6 percent white; the other,

black, 5.2; Hispanic, 2.5 and other, 2.5; so there is about 10 percent, which would bear out with that 8,000 to 10,000 that are in

minority status.

Mr. SOUDER. Odds are that Hispanic is slightly understated.

Rev. ROWLEY. Probably.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have anything you wanted to add on the

basic statistical? I will come back with some specific questions.

Are you seeing the same diversity challenges in your school?

Ms. PITTS. Having the Spanish influx certainly is raising questions and issues that we are having to deal with as far as ESL

teachers. We have a great relationship with the Hispanic pastors,

which are helping us make the transitions and the—when we get

the littlest kids it is not an issue because they can pick up language so quickly. Bringing the older children in, it is going to

present some issues of getting ESL teachers and looking at our program.

So that would be our greatest exciting challenge, is looking at the

Spanish influx coming into Franklin.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Congresswoman Blackburn.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you so much.

Thank you all for your testimony and your preparation for today,

I appreciate it.

Ms. Pitts, a couple of questions for you.

Ms. PITTS. Sure.

Ms. BLACKBURN. How many students total do you have at New

Hope?

Ms. PITTS. This coming fall, we will have 144 students.

Ms. BLACKBURN. 144.

Ms. PITTS. Uh-huh.

Ms. BLACKBURN. And the space that you are conducting the

school in, could you describe that for me?

Ms. PITTS. Yes, we have been blessed with a 33,000 square foot

beautiful facility on Downs Boulevard that we have been in for the

last 2 years. We rented space just down the road for the first 5

years and we are entering our third year of having our own facility

that will be able to house two classes of pre-kindergarten through

the sixth grade. That is what we have established at this point. It

was strategically placed within the different economic neighborhoods of Franklin.

Ms. BLACKBURN. So you built your own facility?

Ms. PITTS. We did.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Raised your money.

Ms. PITTS. We did.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK, great.

Ms. PITTS. And still are raising money. [Laughter.]

Rev. ROWLEY. A lot of money.

Rev. DENSON. Not government funding.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK. And you are a 7-year-old school?

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Ms. PITTS. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK. Now talk with me for a moment about the

students that finish your program and where they move on to and

then I would like for you to quickly follow that with a little bit

about your success rate as far as children staying in school and include in your explanation, graduates, if you have had any high

school graduates.

Ms. PITTS. OK. We are an elementary school and we have only

been in existence 7 years and we since started with pre-K through

second grade, our graduates at this point have just finished eighth

grade; so being able to see, you know, the impact as far as high

school dropouts and graduates from high school, we are not at that

place yet.

As far as graduates from New Hope Academy, we are committed

to go through the eighth grade because we feel like seventh and

eighth grade are so critical to a child. At this point financially we

do not feel that we need to do that yet. We will build our seventh

and eighth grade at a later time.

So at this point, our sixth graders move into either other Christian schools, private schools or public schools. And what we try to

do at the school along with the parents is to find the school that

will best address the child’s needs, that will best fulfill their goals

and their strengths. And so we see all those as good options.

I would say typically roughly two-thirds of our graduates go on

to some form of private schooling. We have had to work with other

private schools to help provide scholarships for these children, and

that has been part of the exciting work, is partnering with organizations that are already here. So whether it’s a VGA that has, you

know, been here since the 1800’s as a private school, or relatively

new Christian privates schools, we try to work with their administration to say we have children that are able to move into your academic program, are you willing to look at them and provide scholarships. And that has been very successful, to see those partnerships at a junior high and a high school level. We do have some

that choose to go on to public middle school as well.

So we have seen the transition be very positive, whether they

move on to a public school setting or they move on to a private

prep school setting. I can say, except for one student that I know,

they have all been successfully able to integrate into a situation,

academically and socially. So we see that as a great impact. In fact,

I think their desire for learning and what they want to see with

their own lives once they move into those middle schools is probably greater than what I have seen come out of other institutions.

I do not know if that fully answers the question.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Yes, that is a great answer for that, I just wanted to get that kind of as background for where we are. I think that

with schools such as yours, just as we have through the years

looked at the home schooling concept, being able to go back and

have that evaluated data, that historical data toward the impact of

the success rate of those children——

Ms. PITTS. Absolutely.

Ms. BLACKBURN [continuing]. Is important. In your testimony

that you presented to us, in our packets, your written statement

that you gave to us, and then in your testimony here today, you

27

have spoken a couple of times of nurturing, of social capital and

leadership skills.

Ms. PITTS. Yes.

Ms. BLACKBURN. So I would like for you to give me a brief statement as to what track you follow with the children in nurturing

them toward developing the leadership that is necessary to be successful in the world. How do you prepare them for this?

Ms. PITTS. Absolutely. Well, I think you begin with where their

deficiencies are. I will get to the leadership part of it, but when you

talk about social capital and you talk about children that come in

with deep wounds, whether it is emotionally or spiritually or otherwise, you really have to—like they were saying before, you have to

deal with the whole child in order for them to be whole, so that

they can move into a place of being effective and impacting leaders.

So again, that nurturing of the heart—I mean when you take

away being able to deal with a child’s needs for faith and values

and morality, you are not able to really strengthen the child to

then carry forth leadership with wisdom and discretion. It might

just be from a factual, knowledgeable place. So I mean, we have

everything from things that we do in the classroom and devotions

to even our teachers that deal with home situations with the child.

We have children that go live with other families for awhile, we

have children that are picked up every afternoon by their teacher

and sent home with their teacher after school.

So whatever it takes to help the child move into a healthy place,

that is first and foremost. Then, as we can develop leadership

skills, I would say some of the things that we do, again, within—

for instance, everything we do in the morning is we start with devotions and our older kids help lead our younger kids. They sit

with the younger kids, they do reading groups, our older kids do

reading groups with younger kids. We give them opportunity for

leadership, but leadership will really happen from hoping to heal

the wounds of the child.

Ms. BLACKBURN. One last question for you and then Mr. Denson

and Mr. Rowley, I would like for each of you to answer this one

for me. Do you believe that a faith-based organization would lose

its identity because of accepting government funds?

Ms. PITTS. I do not, as long as there were no particular strings

attached to where we had to change our curriculum or we had to

change the way that we did things. If we did not have to change

the way we were already doing our program, I think it could work

beautifully, I think it could be a wonderful partnership.

Rev. DENSON. I think the support is much needed from the government, but I agree with Paige, and that is if we have to change

the way we do business, if a mountain of paperwork becomes a

problem, then I would say no. It would defeat the purpose, you

know, because the government is notorious for paperwork and this

kind of thing. Because the faith-based initiatives right now are

doing a tremendous job on paperwork and this kind of thing, without being watched or governed. And so I do believe that if it could

be business as usual for the faith-based initiatives, I think the government could play a tremendous partner in that.

Rev. ROWLEY. I would agree that we have an opportunity to, I

think all of us, mature and for this next full century say how does

28

the idea of the separation of church and state really work and for

those that are adamant on either side to come to compromise and

say this is not about the government directing the church and

faith-based work. It’s also not about faith-based work just taking

advantage of government.

Rev. DENSON. Agreed.

Rev. ROWLEY. And if we do not willingly come together and say

we need each other, then we lose out I think on a great opportunity.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me pursue a couple of different questions with

this. Maybe you can answer this first. If you had to change—I am

trying to think of the best way to say this. It is really awkward

when we are in this arena, talking about the difference between

people who are working for the government and people who are

working in the private sector. You have made some presumptions

and if anybody—if I am wrong in any of these presumptions, just

correct me for the record now. I personally do not think it is necessarily true—it might be true in some cases—that people who

work for the government are not moved and care about their people. The same for public teachers and private teachers. There may

be some differences and I am not saying some people do not get

burned out and all that type of thing, but often it is taken that

when we try to hold up faith-based organizations that somehow we

are putting down other people.

There are some structural differences and let me try to touch on

a couple of these. In your school, what is your size to teacher

ratio—pupil to teacher?

Ms. PITTS. Twelve students to one teacher.

Mr. SOUDER. Are you able to maintain that difference? Do you

get any government funds?

Ms. PITTS. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Not even indirect, for IDEA?

Ms. PITTS. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Computers?

Ms. PITTS. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Not even indirect funds. Do you know whether any

of your students get indirect funds?

Ms. PITTS. No.

Mr. SOUDER. For disabilities or anything?

Ms. PITTS. No.

Mr. SOUDER. So you are able to get to 12 class size predominantly because of private giving.

Ms. PITTS. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. And in that private giving, if you lost any of your

unique religious angles, would the private giving likely dry up?

Ms. PITTS. Absolutely. I think the school would dry up, not just

the giving.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me as a couple of tough questions, because one

of the big debates on this—as you can see, the Democratic ranking

member and the other Members are not here, they have given me,

because we work very closely with each other, the ranking Democratic on this committee, Elijah Cummings, is head of the Black

Caucus, he knows we have mutual concern about minority issues,

29

he has given me free hand to run the hearings but I have to be

careful because I am a very conservative Republican and I do not

venture into areas that become too partisan and we are going to

have some national debates with Americans for Separation of

Church and State and so on. And I am not looking for particular

controversial answers and I do not want to get into kind of the

most explosive areas of do you hire non-Christians, homosexuality.

Those are fundamental questions, but I want to get into one that

we do not explore very often.

If in your school you had a teacher who you heard was beating

his spouse, would you have a discussion and/or terminate that person, whether or not it went to court?

Ms. PITTS. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Because you would view that as compromising your

mission, even if it had not been proven true.

Ms. PITTS. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Now one thing that is not understood in faith-based

by a lot of people is if you get government money, you could not

do that, because you would have to have a due process hearing and

this is a very touchy thing when I talk to different religious organizations who want government money, because organizations that

are faith-based think that their staff is part of their mission. And

it is not just the traditional controversial things we hear about hiring. You lose discretion on things that are potential testimony presumably to the organizations or yourselves as reflecting the glory

of Christ. If that is the case, then you do not want to reflect—and

the problem here are rumors or allegations or things that you may

have heard in church from counseling, and this is a very explosive

category and the biggest controversy, hiring, with it and it is usually around the more inflammatory things, which is a second category.

But I wanted to touch on that.

And the giving angle is important because if you get government

funds but have to compromise, even if you were willing to compromise your mission, what I wanted to establish is that it also

might compromise your giving because—even if you are willing to

compromise your mission in order to get government funds, you

might find that you did not get enough net gain in dollars. In other

words, if we put something on you that——

Rev. ROWLEY. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you comment as well?

Rev. ROWLEY. Well, I think that because we do rely heavily on

donors and those that believe in the mission, that is potentially

there. I think it takes a lot of communication, I think it takes a

lot of making sure people work through each of those—I am not

saying it would not be difficult. It would be difficult, we would have

to work through it, but I do think that can be communicated. And

I think that is where people are going. I think people desire to be

a part of something that is an answer that is producing and being

successful.

Mr. SOUDER. Now presumably in your organization with the diversity of programs you are doing, you are touching a number of

government funds.

Rev. ROWLEY. No.

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Mr. SOUDER. In probation, housing?

Rev. ROWLEY. No, none of those funds.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you get any students assigned by a court or any

young people assigned by a court? You have touched government

funds if you have somebody assigned by a court.

Rev. ROWLEY. Meaning that we would receive money for that student?

Ms. BLACKBURN. No.

Mr. SOUDER. Maybe you could describe the creative probation

with me.

Rev. DENSON. We just had recently a case to come, a young man

had committed a crime, the court sentenced him to like 120 days

I think it was, and it was probation, turned him over to the Empty

Hands Fellowship that we might nurture and speak some things

into his life. And so this is how that innovative——

Mr. SOUDER. Was he ordered into your custody or was he given

the choice to go into your custody?

Rev. DENSON. He was given a choice.

Mr. SOUDER. Does he receive any support for going through your

programs or you just took him?

Rev. DENSON. No.

Mr. SOUDER. In any of the housing, could you describe some of

the housing programs that you have done?

Rev. ROWLEY. Yeah, it is all money that is raised from the private sector in order to rehab existing homes or build new homes,

like the Habitat style. Habitat is just so backlogged, as well as

Williamson County Housing Partnership, which is another wonderful work that does affordable housing.

Rev. DENSON. Basically I would say with the exception of we will

say Mercy Children’s Clinic, which receives TennCare, most of the

organizations within the Franklin community are not government

funded, it is money that is raised, that is given.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you get any community block grant money for

anything?

Rev. ROWLEY. We are making attempts. We are kind of new to

that.

Mr. SOUDER. Because community block grant is Federal money

that comes down to the local level community social services. They

are allowed to include faith-based organizations in that under the

Charitable Choice provision, but that is one that is going to be

challenging.

Rev. ROWLEY. I believe there was one block grant with the Community Housing Partnership in Williamson County that was on

Glass Street here in Franklin, that was half a million dollars that

was used over the last 6 years or so.

Mr. SOUDER. I agree with you on the general principle of a

voucher, where the individual makes a choice, and certainly judges

have to be very careful. I have three college friends of mine who

are now judges in Fort Wayne and particularly all the juvenile

judges, and they are really working with what they can do to assign in drug courts—I really like the term creative probation—

other types of programs like that and how they can interact with

the faith community. But they have to be very careful because the

individual has to have that choice.

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One of you in your testimony said that in I believe it was drug

rehab, that there was not a local program, Nashville is the closest?

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. How far is Nashville?

Rev. DENSON. About 20 miles.

Mr. SOUDER. Twenty minutes or so. In terms of government

grant programs, that is probably relatively close. One of the things

that, as we have worked through the different flexibility provisions

is that there clearly has to be a choice for the individual that would

include a non-religious choice or we would not be giving them a

true voucher, we would be saying this is the only government document or alternative.

Let me ask a couple of—and any that you feel are, it depends on

the situation or you do not desire to answer, that is fine. I want

to ask a couple of questions.

In any of your programs, do you begin with prayer or include

prayer as part of——

Rev. ROWLEY. Prayer is really the central part of everything we

do, it really is what we think we are here to do, is to commune

with the Lord, reconcile with the Lord, as he has reconciled with

us, and then reconcile with each other.

Rev. DENSON. One of the things I would like to say is that I do

a lot of street ministry, I deal with those who are chemical and alcohol dependent. They know who I am, they know my calling and

when they come to me, they know I am going to pray. It is not

something that is forced on them, they know it is going to happen

when they come.

Mr. SOUDER. If you were told that prayer could not be part of

your program, do you believe your program would lose some of its

effectiveness?

Rev. ROWLEY. Yes.

Rev. DENSON. Maybe the program would not, but I would, I

would lose some of my effectiveness.

Rev. ROWLEY. Yeah.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you believe if you had to take your collars off,

it would impact your ministry?

Rev. ROWLEY. No.

Rev. DENSON. I do not wear it during the day.

Rev. ROWLEY. And again, I wear it to public places—I wear it to

places like this, when we met the President——

Rev. DENSON. Right.

Rev. ROWLEY [continuing]. Because it is a distinguishing, certainly in our culture, it is a distinguishing mark that says to us

and a demonstration that we are here to represent Christ. And you

know, that is another point that is very important.

Rev. DENSON. The collar does not make me who I am.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you be able to talk to kids who were in trouble or implement your programs if you could not say the word

Christ?

Rev. DENSON. I do it all the time.

Rev. ROWLEY. Yeah, we do that. I mean in terms of just the

sheer anthropology of our work, that we are working and dealing

with people, and so we talk like people. At the same time, if in the

course of that conversation, they ask why do we give hope for the

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future, it certainly does not have a lot to do with our skills and

ability, it has to do with our Creator.

Rev. DENSON. And I think the Gospel is basically demonstrated

in how you relate to people, not by what you say. It is what they

see in us.

Mr. SOUDER. When you are dealing with the Kurds, how do you

handle that?

Rev. ROWLEY. It has been interesting, obviously the influx of

Muslim people, and it is the same way that we are working with

a variety of religious belief. When the President was here, he had

a great comment that I thought was right, that said, in terms of

recovery, what we want to see people do is come off their addiction

and we do not really care whether it is a crescent or a Star of

David or a cross that is on the interior of that rehab center. Really

are the people coming off of drugs.

And AA has a Christology about it, it has a Biblical base to it,

but at the same time, it is not a place where you are going to hear

a lot of religious talk. You will hear about a Higher Power, which

is a religious idea, but for us, we are centered on Christ. At the

same time, AA is there to keep people sober, and if that is what’s

happening, why would we not get behind that in order for them to

move into wherever—as Paige said eloquently, wherever God is

calling them, whoever he is calling them to be. That is not our decision, that is God’s decision. All we can do is be faithful to what we

know is true.

Rev. DENSON. That is one of the reasons I think the voucher system would be a tremendous system, because then an individual can

make the decision, yes, I want to go to the faith-based group. You

know, it would be a choice.

Mr. SOUDER. If I can continue to pursue this——

Ms. BLACKBURN. Go ahead, I will go back.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. You are right at the edge of some of

the very difficult questions we are trying to work through because

we want to try to figure out how to help and expand faith-based

programs without choking them. Because faith-based programs

without the faith component are based programs which we aren’t

even sure what it means then.

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me pursue this a little further. You said earlier

that you believe that relationships were the key, not resources.

That is one of the differences between you and government. That

you believe that changing—that you want to see their lives

changed. So let us take a Kurdish person who comes—Muslim presumably, because not all of them are, but let us say they are Muslim. They come to your group. You also said your primary goal was

not to proselytize.

Rev. DENSON. Uh-huh.

Mr. SOUDER. So if they come to you for housing, your goal is to

get them a house. Do you believe that the primary purpose that

people are giving you money in your organization is to give them

a house or are they also thinking you are giving them a house and

also going to lead them to Christ?

Rev. ROWLEY. I believe that people support us because they are

convinced that the mission that we have is right. And to say that

33

the mission can be separated into the context of the whole person

from their spiritual life, their physical life, their emotional life. To

think that could be separated, we would probably have a problem

with and most of our donors would think Biblically—or in terms of

world view, would have that same world view.

So I would think it would be——

Rev. DENSON. Well, one of the things that happens is our Savior,

Jesus Christ, when he took the two fish and five barley loaves and

fed the 5,000, everybody there was not in his corner, it did not matter. We are here to live out the Gospel and just because a person

does not accept Christ does not mean that I cannot have compassion for them.

Mr. SOUDER. By the way, I absolutely agree with that statement.

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you be concerned if you got that person the

fish or the house, but you felt their soul was lost, to do followup

with them or do you view that as somebody else’s job?

Rev. ROWLEY. Probably just as good social servants, followup is

critical. One of the things that Paige does so beautifully in her

school, as Marsha has encouraged her, as Congressman Blackburn

has encouraged her, to re-evaluate. They consistently say how do

we followup and again——

Mr. SOUDER. They are fine in a secular sense.

Rev. DENSON. Well, if you tell me that he is OK and do not want

me bothering with him, he just got left alone. You know, one of the

things you cannot do, you cannot force anything on anybody.

So what has to happen is that I have to let that person know

that I am available for you no matter what happens, you know,

whether you accept Christ or not. My concern is to help you, my

concern is to be there for you whenever you need me. That would

be the total concern.

Mr. SOUDER. Your quote, proselytization would be that you are

going to let your light shine.

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. If they come to you and say why are you doing this,

what is your motivation, you will share with them, and you are

going to make general statements about your faith throughout because it is integrated in a holistic life.

Rev. DENSON. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. But your primary role at this particular mission is

not the proselytization, it is to provide the human secular services.

Rev. DENSON. It is how can I serve you. What can I do to serve

you.

Rev. ROWLEY. Christ’s example of word and deed, that he speaks

the truth of the Gospel but he lives the truth of the Gospel as well.

And that would be our motive and model.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the examples that I have turned on its head

in my home community is—and we have had some—I can see how

this works in juvenile probation where there may be several alternatives in drug treatment, but I knocked out in the original J.C.

Watts bill—under the current bill, they have withdrawn all the

Charitable Choice because we cannot move any legislation right

now, it is just tax breaks, which are very important, which is the

centerpiece of it. And we got off, in my opinion, on a side piece.

34

But we were looking at senior nutritionsites. Now unlike a person for drug treatment who may, in fact, go all the way to Minnesota to the Hazeldon Clinic or something, that if you are in a

nutritionsite and you are 90 years old and you are trying to get nutrition, you are probably looking more in terms of blocks than you

are otherwise.

Rev. DENSON. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. I have a neighborhood where the majority of this

huge housing complex, about half are Burmese and Buddhists and

about half are Bosnian Muslims. A faith-based group won that

nutritionsite for administering it. Also, the community around it,

which is predominantly Christian, and if that group did what you

do—this is our Federal challenge. If they had a voucher and the

only nutritionsite was provided by a faith-based group, probably

Buddhist or Muslim, how would you feel if it was your mom or dad

who was going there and they were constantly referring to Mohammed or had prayer as part of the program, even if they were not

forcing it on, basically before they got the food—what would your

reaction—in other words, I understand what you are trying to say

and from my perspective as a Majoritarian and a Christian, I do

not feel like if I am just helping serve you, but Christ is part of

my life and I start with prayer and that is just part of me. I would

think you could accept it if you want to be part of this program.

On the other hand, how would you feel if it is reversed. That is

our challenge right now in the government.

Rev. ROWLEY. I just think that if you look at it competitively,

then that is probably the wrong way to look at it in my mind. And

again, my mom, if she were in that process, I would first of all

thank those people for feeding her and I would be grateful and

thankful for wherever she was getting food. And at the same time,

my witness, my personal life hopefully in front of them would be

that this is what I believe.

We cannot change anybody, that is not our job to change people.

We believe God changes hearts and therefore, we would be hopefully consistent in that same arena.

Mr. SOUDER. I am going to yield.

Ms. BLACKBURN. I do not.

Mr. SOUDER. I appreciate and I want to—we will probably have

some followups as we go through. I got a little more in-depth but

you had very creative answers to your challenges, that the social

programming questions is different than the school questions. The

school questions, we are battling through in the Education Committee and we are basically at full, complete gridlock. The courts

have already ruled that—and you heard me hinting that, that you

could probably get involved and be eligible for—although the public

school systems do not like it—transportation funding. You could

probably be eligible and we are battling this through IDEA right

now to make it more explicit, but kids with disabilities are more

able to get vouchers. The courts have ruled that a computer is religious neutral, it is the software that is not. So Catholic schools are

eligible for that type of thing.

Be very careful with touching it, as you could hear from my types

of questions. This is very, very explosive. But was important to get

into the record, which we were doing here, is how much your faith

35

is completely integrated in your programmatic, and also how your

supporters are completely integrated into that mission. And that if

we take action by the Federal Government that move faith-based

organizations into the arena of public funding, that where we

touch—he who pays the piper picks the tune, for all told guys, a

statement. Raising the question of who is the piper and what is the

tune. But this is a very difficult question.

But what we have in front of us and you have stated this today,

is—and this is what is so important about your testimony and as

we hear from the next panel, is that you have people who have said

we will step forward, we will reduce the class size for the highest

risk. We will try to take on kids in probation, we will try to help

somebody rehab their house. How can we leverage that at a time

when the bulk of the people are saying what are we going to do

to help these people. There are people coming forth saying we are

doing it, we want to do it and what we are wrestling with right

now is how do we highlight that, that across this nation, thousands

of people are doing this and how do we have this mismatch between the rhetoric in the debate and these nuances of how you implement this. I hope we can win the point on if there are choices,

there should be a voucher, but the term is so explosive any more.

Any closing comments any of you want to make?

Rev. DENSON. I would just like to thank you for the opportunity

and privilege to be here this morning to speak to faith-based initiatives.

Rev. ROWLEY. One of my favorite quotes is as I was preaching

that it could not be done, I was interrupted by someone doing it.

I think that is well spoken on your part.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said our lives begin to end the day

we become silent about things that matter. That is our hope, that

we continue to keep life alive.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you. I thank you for your work at racial

reconciliation as well. I think that is important around the country

and I do not think Christ would have seen colors or ethnic backgrounds and it is real important that we all work together.

Thank you very much.

If the second panel could come forth. If you can remain standing,

I will administer the oath. Let me see, we have Mr. Kirk and Mr.

Lanz, right? Will you raise your right hands?

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that both witnesses responded

in the affirmative.

Thank you for joining us this morning and we will start with Mr.

Kirk the director of the Family Foundation Fund from Nashville,

TN, who presumably got here in a shorter route than we did. We

kind of looped around, we got lost.

STATEMENTS OF ONNIE KIRK, DIRECTOR, THE FAMILY FOUNDATION FUND, NASHVILLE, TN; AND JOHN LANZ, CORRECTIONS CORP. OF AMERICA, NASHVILLE, TN

Mr. KIRK. We are blessed and honored to be here today and we

do appreciate both of you inviting us to be here to speak on behalf

of faith-based initiatives.

36

As you know, the name of our organization is the Family Foundation Fund, and the Family Foundation Fund was started because

we saw the absence of fathers in America. And then after seeing

the absence of fathers, we began to study the spiritual principles

of what happens when there is not a father in the home.

In America today, there are 35 million homes that do not have

their biological father there to cover and to oversee and to nurture

the souls of the children in that home. That has grave implications.

One thing about our Nation, this Nation was built upon the principles of God’s word—it was built that way. Even in the Declaration of Independence, I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all

men are created equal and are endowed by our Creator, which is

God, to certain inalienable rights.

Yet, if we do not adhere to the principles of God’s word, then we

find that what happens is God’s judgment or we can use the word

curses, are implemented when we do not adhere to God’s principles.

He called fathers, he said, ‘‘Fathers, nurture your children and

bring them up in the fear and the admonition of the Lord.’’ Well,

if you have 35 million homes, you know, where the biological father

is not resident, what happens to that household? We can look at

history, history bears record of the spiritual truth of when a father

is absent, what happens.

Psychologists today will tell you that a child’s identity is shaped

by his father. Now in the black community, 70 percent of the

homes do not have fathers in residence. What happens to the

child’s identity if there is no father there to shape that identity?

In history, we see people like—I guess to go back in history—

Adolf Hitler, his father was absent at age 13; Joseph Stalin. Adolf

killed 10 million and Joseph Stalin—I mean Adolf killed 6 million

and Joseph Stalin’s father was an alcoholic and divorced his mother when he was 8 years old. No father there, he goes out and kills

10 million.

We can bring it more recently. Saddam Hussein and both Yasar

Arafat were orphans. The spiritual implications of the father being

removed is traumatic in terms of what happens to the soul of the

children.

So we started the Family Foundation Fund with the understanding—I mean we can even bring it to our own living rooms—Dennis

Rodman, his father actually said that his whole goal in life was to

father as many children as he could. At that point that I heard this

on TV, he had fathered 30 children by as many different women.

Howard Stern’s father referred to him as a piece of excrement, that

is the only way his father ever referred to him. Now you think

about this. What has happened to the souls of these men or these

children when the father is not there?

Becoming aware of this spiritual principle, in 1993, we began the

Family Foundation Fund. And the mission of the Family Foundation Fund is the restoration of fatherhood, realizing that God created us as tri-human beings—we are spirit, we are souls and we

are bodies. If we do not deal with the spiritual part of who we are,

then we cannot correct those other two. That is just not going to

be. God established us as a tri-human being. The Family FoundaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:33 Nov 14, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89770.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion Fund focuses on the tri-human being of the children that we

mentor.

Now our program is geared toward young men because we firmly

feel if we can get the young men right, then they will grow up—

they will not father children out of wedlock, they will not abuse

their wives, they will care for their family, they will protect their

family and do the things that God has said for them to do.

So we focus on young men, but we have had the opportunity to

have a couple of young ladies participate in our education program

and I was so glad to hear about New Hope Academy because one

thing that we do, we fund our children in private Christian education. We raise the funds from the private sector to pay their tuition for them to go to private Christian schools. In the process of

doing this, some of the boys had sisters, so we funded them

through private Christian education as well. We have not been able

to help hundreds of students, the program has had 26 students

participate.

Of the five who have graduated the program, all five of them

have made commitments to Christ, to the Lord Jesus. None of

them have fathered any children out of wedlock. As far as we

know, none of them have been on drugs and all of them completed

their high school education. Three of them have gone on to college

and one is working full time and one is getting ready to go into the

U.S. Coast Guard.

Now interestingly enough, two of those students come from a

generation wherein three generations, no one finished high school.

Yet, because they had a father figure who encouraged, who affirmed, who blessed them, they were to steer the course and complete high school and to go on and are in the process of building

a successful life.

The Family Foundation Fund, what we do, we engage the community of Nashville. During the summer time, our boys have the

opportunity to spend 3 days with a business professional, whether

it is a real estate person, a banker or whether it is a brick mason,

a lawyer, a doctor. They have that experience to go and be with

that business professional for 3 days to see what a man does in his

life. Also, each Friday, they experience what we call a recreation

day where they go boating or they may go to an amusement park

or they may go swimming, but they do something entertaining,

something to broaden their understanding. We have even had the

opportunity to take them on enrichment trips down to Orlando and

up to Dollywood and this year, we plan on taking them to New

York City to see Ground Zero and the United Nations. But expose

them to see that there is more to life than just their neighborhoods.

The participants in our program, if the income for their family

is below $35,000 a year, there is no fee for the program. If it is

above $35,000 we do have a program fee on a graduated scale, but

there is only one student in the program that is paying a fee and

that is $77 a month. He lives with his grandmother and she does

earn over $35,000 a year, so she is able to help and willing to do

that.

In looking at the program, we believe that by giving them Christian education, it re-enforces what we teach them from the Bible.

They go to a school where Jesus’ name is lifted up and where they

38

understand that God’s law and his principles are eternal, whether

it is for a government, whether it is for a household, whether it is

for a school system, the principles of God are eternal and they do

not change.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Mr. Lanz.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kirk follows:]

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40

41

42

43

Mr. LANZ. Chairman, Congressman Blackburn, it is a pleasure to

be here representing Corrections Corp. of America—good morning.

Let me start off by simply saying that Corrections Corp. of America is a private prison company that designs and manages correctional facilities, primarily adult men and women jails and prisons

and some juvenile facilities. Within this company—and it was

founded by several gentlemen—Mr. Don Hutto, Mr. Beasley—they

felt very strongly that programs was a big part of what we do with

the lives of the offenders. And in the Inmate Programs Department

at our facility support center here in Nashville, our corporate headquarters, we have an Inmate Programs Department that designs

and manages and oversees, supports various programs, whether

they are educational/vocational programs, addiction treatment programs, but as well as special programs such as prison industries

where companies come in and employ and train inmates.

But also we have religious programs and spiritual programs in

our correctional facilities. And in our facilities, we have chaplains

that provide and coordinate, if you will, these services.

What I think our company has found is that in partnership with

government, the offender is our product and we know truly well

that within 3 years, the great majority of these offenders will be

released back into the communities and so, therefore, what you are

looking for is change. You are looking for change where the offenders will not recidivate, they will not recommit more crimes and victimize society.

Having said that, it has always been important for CCA to employ chaplains that are trained to administer not only to the offender in our facilities, but as well to our staff—staff and offenders.

Now the last several years—and it truly is the pleasure—my

company has asked me to work on special programming and we

have been able to partner with a number of mainstream ministries

and establish some wonderful faith-based initiatives. Not to supplant our programs, but to enhance our programs because what we

are finding is that we can educate our inmates, we can address

their chemical addiction issues, we can address their employability

issues, even their social issues, their cognitive critical thinking

issues. But to heal the offender, to make a difference in them, we

have found that we need to change them in their soul, in their

heart, to heal with the anger that they have, with the resentment

they have toward society. Because they have had problems obviously fitting into what we call mainstream America. They are missing out on the dream.

Now let me share with you some of the faith-based initiatives

that I think our company is real excited about partnering with.

Many of you have heard of the Bill Blass Champions for Life. This

is an organization that was founded specifically to establish what

we call Weekend of Champions or Day of Champions, with a followup program. It is Christian, Biblical, but it is also very voluntary.

Offenders of all faiths can volunteer and attend these programs.

Champions for Life in the next few years will be providing comprehensive programs in addition to followup programs at all of our

59 facilities, which we think has the potential to impact close to

60,000 inmates and about 12,000 staff as well, because those program have an impact on our staff.

44

Another wonderful mainstream ministry that we have recently

announced and partnered with is an organization whose primary

mission is to provide chaplains, trained chaplains, with wonderful

programs and training programs. This organization is called Good

News Jails and Prison Ministries. And that is what they do, they

provide chaplains to work with the offenders, male and female offenders, in the prisons or jails or juvenile facilities.

Our chaplains along with Good News Jails’ chaplains facilitate

the spiritual beliefs of all mainstream religions. So whether they

are Christian, whether they are Jewish, whether they are Muslim,

regardless, if they are recognizable religions, they will facilitate

and encourage these religions to come in and administer to the

population.

Another organization that you may have heard—and they are established throughout the country—is Kairos Horizon—and I will

say Kairos. It had its beginning some 46 years ago and there is an

organization that is part of it that is called Kairos Horizon. What

this organization does is they recruit volunteers and they come in

and set up weekend programs—conduct weekend programs and establish what we call faith communities in our correctional facilities

that encourage the offender to participate in all programs, but to

grow because they are exposed and have a chance to discuss and

hear testimony regarding Christ and his teachings and so forth.

Again, this is a voluntary program, all of our programs are voluntary.

There is another faith-based initiative that has been around for

a long time, very, very successful in this country and it is the Bill

Gothard’s organization out of Chicago, the Institute for Basic

Skills. What they have done is have established seminars throughout the country in cooperation with churches, but they have what

they call a Christian prison ministry where they come in and, via

seminars, they can establish weekend or day programs, followup

programs. Most importantly, they also assist our facilities in establishing what we call faith communities. This is where you take offenders and you locate them in a particular pod.

Right here in Nashville, there is another wonderful faith-based

organization that has been very active in the southeast with

churches providing seminars and that is called Field Therapy.

Field Therapy under the leadership of Valena Darr, again very Biblical, but they work inside of our Metro Detention facility here in

Nashville. This is their second year of operation. The wonderful

thing about this organization is that they establish the pods, the

offenders experience weekend of religious experiences, evening

groups and small group discussions and individual counseling by

volunteers. And then upon being furloughed or released, paroled,

what-have-you, in the community, via local volunteers, if the offender so chooses, can participate in a program where the local

churches provide volunteers to more or less mentor and work with

the offender and his family or her family and try to help them adjust to society and that sort of thing.

Last, but not least, another mainstream ministry that has been

around a long time and it focuses on disability—Johnny and

Friends Wheels for the World. And what this organization does is

it establishes programs at our correctional facilities where the ofVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:33 Nov 14, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89770.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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fenders rehabilitate, if you will, wheelchairs, walkers and crutches

and these disability instruments, if you will, are provided for Third

World countries throughout the world.

The bottom line is this—I notice the red light is on, but the bottom line is this—all of these mainstream ministries work with our

staff and our chaplains in these faith-based initiatives to recruit,

retain volunteers that enhance our programs. We are real proud of

our academic, vocational and rehabilitative programs, but without

these faith-based initiatives that address the spiritual needs of the

person, true healing does not take place.

I could share with you some success stories, one perhaps by Kent

Lucas with Champions for Life, but given the time restraints;

thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Any of that you want to submit for the record, like

that story or the notes you were working from, if you want to give

us that, we will make sure we put that in the record as well.

You said Keros Horizon?

Mr. LANZ. Kairos.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you spell that?

Mr. LANZ. K-a-i-r-o-s.

Mr. SOUDER. And could you clarify again for me, you said you

have 59—you operate 59 facilities with 60,000 inmates?

Mr. LANZ. Approximately 60,000.

Mr. SOUDER. Are you a contractor?

Mr. LANZ. We are a private prison company traded on the New

York Stock Exchange that partners with Federal, State and local

government to provide facilities to protect society and to rehabilitate offenders.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you build the facilities as well?

Mr. LANZ. We have, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. So you may or may not build but you always contract.

Mr. LANZ. We are capable of designing and building, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And does the State, local or Federal Government

contract with you by number of prisons or for a particular court or

for a region? How does that——

Mr. LANZ. How typically it works, whether it is Federal, State or

local government, they will put out an RFP, request for proposal.

We are in competition, we will respond to the proposal and if so

chosen, we will either design, build and manage the facility. And

what happens in this particular situation, we have like a management contract, we receive a per diem for the number of inmates

that we work with and take care of.

Typically, like I said, the programming that is included is chaplain and religious services.

Mr. SOUDER. The last part, I want to make sure I understand the

concept, so my questions are on point.

Do you provide guard protection, food——

Mr. LANZ. Yes, security.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. All that. And are they non-violent or

violent or——

Mr. LANZ. Minimum to medium security, typically.

Mr. SOUDER. Adult and juvenile?

Mr. LANZ. Adult and juvenile.

46

Mr. SOUDER. Men and women?

Mr. LANZ. Male and female.

Mr. SOUDER. And how many States are you in?

Mr. LANZ. About 20 States at this time. Do not quote me on that.

Mr. SOUDER. Is your corporation based in Nashville?

Mr. LANZ. Yes, sir, it is.

Mr. SOUDER. And is it dominant more in the south or are your

20 States pretty spread?

Mr. LANZ. We are spread out as far as Montana to the tip of

Florida to the tip of California. And I would say predominantly in

the southeast.

Mr. SOUDER. And are some of these groups that you talked

about, the Kairos Horizon, the Good News Jails and Prison Ministries, Champions for Life—are they predominantly serving your

facilities or are they broader as well.

Mr. LANZ. Very good question. I think all of these mainstream

ministries to a degree have relationships with Federal and State

governments. As far as other private companies, prison companies,

I am not certain about that.

Mr. SOUDER. And do they get paid by you and your organization?

Mr. LANZ. These organizations are all 501s, non-profits, OK? And

in partnership with them, CCA makes a contribution. When we

pull these programs in or these providers into our facilities, it is

at no additional cost to government. For example, we may have a

chaplain position that is provided by the per diem. OK? And if we

choose to work with Good News Jails and they provide one of our

chaplains, they would receive those funds typically, but at no additional cost to government.

Mr. SOUDER. And do you get paid the per diem—your goal is to

rehab—this is not a trick question, I am not trying to get any kind

of answer. Your goal is to keep them locked up and off the street

during the period of time that they are in your custody, but you

would like to have the additional goal of rehabbing, is that——

Mr. LANZ. It is our goal, those two components. Our mission is

to obviously serve government and protect society, OK? So our customer is government, but our product is the offender. And given

the fact that within 3 years research is showing that the great majority, upwards to 55–60 percent of those offenders will be released,

part of the reason we are having this overcrowded situation and

what-have-you is that there is a serious problem with recidivating,

inmates or offenders recidivating. So therefore, we look at the results for accomplishing and shaping our product, if you will.

Mr. SOUDER. But you get your per diem based on the period of

time they are with you, not whether they have been rehabbed or

what-not.

Mr. LANZ. That is correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Kirk, I have run over here. I am going to yield

to Ms. Blackburn in just a second.

You said you were founded in 1993?

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Is it predominantly yourself, do you have staff with

this too?

Mr. KIRK. There are three of us full time—our mentoring coordinator, who deals directly with the boy and his biological family, his

47

church family and his surrogate father family. See, each one of the

boys has a surrogate father and that surrogate father is a Christian man who believes in the word of God, who raises to boy spiritually. Now the boy does not live with him, but we ask them when

we orientate the surrogate father if they will pray for that boy

every day as they do their own children. And that when there are

issues and situations come up, you know, that they would use the

word of God as the foundation. Like if the boy says I cannot do

this, you know, they will say, Christopher, the word of the Lord

says you can do all things through Christ. So you can pass this

math test if you really get down to it and study. So the surrogate

father is there to be the father in his life.

When the boy turns 13, we have a—I guess in the Jewish culture

they would call it like a Bar Mitzvah, but we call it a passage to

manhood. And that surrogate father is there to pray over that boy

and say I will be with you, son, all the way through.

And even after the program is over, after they graduate, their

senior year, our hope and what we have seen thus far, is that the

boys stay in relationship. I just heard from a 21-year-old—Tennessee interviewed him yesterday, he is now a junior at MTS University and he said that had it not been for the Godly men in his

life, that he would not have made it and he still today is abstaining, even though there are many sexual pressures. He today says

I will go to my marriage bed a virgin.

Mr. SOUDER. Are you based primarily in Nashville?

Mr. KIRK. Only in Nashville, with hopes of some day being able

to expand to other areas.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, I will yield to Congressman Blackburn.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I do have a few

questions I want to ask and then I have to move on to meet the

Secretary of Labor who is here with another group of our Tennesseans. And thank you to both of you so very much for being here

today to provide some testimony and some background.

Mr. Kirk, I will continue. How many have been in your program

since it started?

Mr. KIRK. The total number is 26.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Twenty-six.

Mr. KIRK. Right.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK, and you have five that have just graduated?

Mr. KIRK. Have completed the program, right.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK. And what has been your success rate? I

mean once they have come in, how many have you lost out of that

program, the ones that initially applied?

Mr. KIRK. Of the ones who initially began, we have lost seven.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Seven, OK. And you spoke a little bit about the

type mentoring activities that you are—with the recreational activities and——

Mr. KIRK. Right.

Ms. BLACKBURN [continuing]. And going to work. Now do you

have any educational tutoring?

Mr. KIRK. Yes, for each one of our boys, we put them through Expressways to Learning.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK.

48

Mr. KIRK. And I do not know if you are familiar with it, but——

Ms. BLACKBURN. Yes, I am.

Mr. KIRK [continuing]. But it addresses the learning deficiency

that the boys have. We fund that for them. And then as I mentioned, they go to private Christian schools, but if there is still a

challenge academically or they are behind, we provide them with

one-on-one tutoring.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK. And with your funding, is 100 percent of

your money privately raised?

Mr. KIRK. It is privately raised, grants and foundations and so

forth. In fact, CCA is one of our supporters.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK. So you have no government funds.

Mr. KIRK. No government funds at all.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK. Do you have any program alums who are

now mentoring other young men?

Mr. KIRK. None as of yet, none of them are old enough to be fathers yet. We have them in college, you know, but until they are

old enough to finish and get into their career—we have had those

boys who are in the program, who have said we look forward to

coming back and helping others, but none of them are of that age

yet.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK, great. One other thing, as the young people

are in the program, do you help them find jobs or——

Mr. KIRK. Exactly. They come into our program at age 10.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK.

Mr. KIRK. Because that is a very crucial time. Even though they

have been with their mother up to that point, at the that time,

most of the mothers will tell you, there is an anger and there is

a restlessness that begins to develop around that age because there

is no man there. We select the boys and bring them in at age 10

and the first 4 years, they participate in like the mentoring experiences with the different men and so forth, but at age 15, Secure

Pharmacy is one of the companies that lets them come in and

work, and Vanderbilt University, Equinox Systems—at age 15,

they are able to begin earning an hourly wage on internships during the summertime.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK. Same question for you I have asked all the

others, do you believe that a faith-based organization would lose its

identity by accepting government funds?

Mr. KIRK. I must answer that very honestly. In my testimony, I

put there is a difference between a faith-based organization and a

Christ-centered organization. And that is critical, because we know

that his word says that he who denies the son is antichrist, you

know, that is what the word of God says. We cannot go around—

our whole Nation is built upon his word.

If an organization receives from the government, as long as

what—I think Pastor Denny said earlier—as long as there is not

a lot of hidden clauses and things that cause them to say we have

to hire this type person, you have to do that. As long as they can

have their independence to follow Christ, I do not see any problem.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK, great.

Mr. Lanz, you have mentioned the six programs that you all are

working with and I think Field Therapy is one that you mentioned

that deals with the family. Do any of the others have a specific

49

mission to address the family of the inmate or the children of the

inmate?

Mr. LANZ. Absolutely, they do. The Kairos Horizon, the Institute,

Field Therapy; in particular, those three have strong programs in

parenting and working with the offender to help them return to

their families upon being released and have a better understanding

of the dynamics of family and the important role that they play in

that family.

Ms. BLACKBURN. OK, great. Same question for you, do you think

that a faith-based organization would be compromised by accepting

government funds?

Mr. LANZ. No, I do not. But I will tell you this, there are several

organizations here; for example, Good News Jails and Prison Ministries, as a policy do not accept any Federal moneys. They have

donations and this sort of thing, even contributions that CCA

makes, but they do not accept or look for government funding.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I thank you and I

thank these witnesses, and if you all will excuse me. This is very

much like it is in D.C., sometimes we feel like we are floating in

and out of all sorts of meetings and going from one to another, but

I do need to move on and meet the Secretary of Labor for a few

minutes before I head back into D.C. So I thank you all very much

for your participation. I thank you and the staff.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. We will see you later tonight.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. I have a couple of additional questions that I would

like to followup with.

There is not any way around to say this, I thought you had a

great statement, the difference between faith-based and Christ-centered. When you take government money, there will be restrictions.

The only question we are debating in Washington is how much and

how many restrictions there will be. That has to be—we have a

really active faith-based community in my home district and

around the country and a standard concern is—well, as long as we

do not get any restrictions—no, no, that is the definition. The

courts already ruled that there will be restrictions. The question

is—and I believe one of those restrictions will be that if you have

Federal money, you are not allowed to pray, which is what the

questions are—because the court has already had some preliminary

rulings that suggest that is the way they are going to go.

Now a voucher program would get around that because if there

are choices for the individual and the court has not—I believe,

based upon having worked this for about 15 years and nobody really knows because only a few cases have gone to government. The

danger that we are in right now, and the prisons are a classic example of this, is that we may have been, in trying to call attention

to how to advance and have more integration with faith, we may

force some programs to back up from where they have been. Now

that does not mean, quite frankly, that you cannot—in other words,

you could have a program on self-esteem and then if they want to

know more about why you are different and unique, you could have

a prayer session before or after that was paid for with private

funds and the other part paid with the government funds. We deal

50

with this in other categories, and this is where we are going to be

working through the details.

But what we are hoping to bring out in these hearings, and today

has been a very good example of the dilemma we are facing, is

many of the most effective programs—and I want to repeat, the difference between faith-based and Christ-centered is critical, because

if faith stays vague, you can probably move through, but to the degree it goes specific, then all of a sudden, the government gets all

nervous and yet, it is the programs that are—there are faith-based

programs that currently get government funds, as long as you do

not get specific. The challenge here is that many of the best results

and the ones where people put their money are the ones that get

specific.

Mr. KIRK. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. I have a couple more specific questions for Mr. Kirk

here I want to followup with.

Do you have waiting lists to get into your program?

Mr. KIRK. We do have applications. We do not accept kids until

we find a surrogate father, a man who can walk with that child.

Mr. SOUDER. Obviously there are more than 26 kids who would

love to be in a program like this.

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And is it widely known? In other words, do you get

lots of people calling to say can I get my 10-year-old into this?

Mr. KIRK. It is known in the city, because we have high profile

people involved with us like Dave Ramsey, he is one of the surrogate fathers; Hal Hadden is a surrogate father—these are very

high profile people, so it is known in the city and we believe that

where we are now is getting ready to go to the next level, meaning

that we have a more public venue than we have had in the past

9 years. So consequently, we are getting more people inquiring and

we are getting men who are saying what do I have to do to be a

surrogate father, because the surrogate father is the key. Ours is

a one-on-one for the soul of that young man, and all who have seen

the result realize that—one young man—quickly—his mother is on

the streets, a drug addict, his grandmother is in and out of the hospital with all kinds of sicknesses. And that young man, he is flourishing because his surrogate family not only are there for him, calling him and talking to him, but they allow him to live with them

Sunday night through Thursday night so he is living in an environment where someone loves him. They are white and he is black,

you know, but it is wonderful to see what is happening.

I do not know if you saw it on the brochure, but if you look on

the brochure, you will see many of the surrogate fathers are white

and the boys are black, but we have both white and black in the

program. In fact, one of my surrogate sons who just graduated is

white and he is the one that is going on to the Coast Guard this

August.

Mr. SOUDER. What is roughly your annual budget a year?

Mr. KIRK. Around $300,000.

Mr. SOUDER. So the cost of this investment times the number of

kids is high.

51

Mr. KIRK. Yes. In fact, just the hard costs, just the tuition, insurance, transportation, those kinds of things are $9,200, but with administrative costs, it is about $18,500 per child.

Mr. SOUDER. Per year?

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. So if they are in 8 years, you are talking an investment of over $150,000.

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And some would say that any program could be

fairly effective if you spent that much per——

Mr. KIRK. Exactly. That is one of the major challenges we have

in the public, because people are looking at numbers but when they

begin to look at the results, they say wait—the State pays $46,000

a year for every child in State custody, you know, because I have

talked to the Secretary of Child Services. He says we get nowhere

close to the results that you guys are getting, yet they spend over

three times as much money.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you say in the criteria for the kids that come

into your program, that most of them would be in that Federal program or do you think——

Mr. KIRK. A lot of them would be, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Because one of the problems we have in government, in trying to figure out how to fund this is that if one of five

who are at risk go in, you would have to take one out of five of

that cost of 46 to get down to your annual.

But I find another interesting thing, and that is dealing with

businessmen, looking at the mix, that there is another dynamic

going on here that we have to understand in the faith-based area

and in government, and that is people are willing to invest this

amount of money in a program like yours, and it is not just because of the success/failure rate, it is because of an intangible. And

that is the faith component.

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. In other words, from a pure government standpoint,

it is not clear that investing the same amount of money would (a)

bring the same return because you are trying to transform a person, you are mixing it with volunteer labor, so in addition to your

$9,200 and your staff cost, you have a volunteer cost in there that

probably does take that up to $46,000 a year, if you actually figure

it out.

Mr. KIRK. Yeah.

Mr. SOUDER. The dollar amount, particular what some of these

guys make.

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And time commitment in the evenings, which would

be overtime in a lot of cases for government employees, weekends,

the mentoring time is critical. And when we are trying to do these

pure financial comparisons, I find it interesting because those

things—if you could maybe talk to some people in your organization and figure out what the volunteer time and the hours are to

coordinate that, as to what the kind of contributed, in addition to

your cash privately raised funds, what the volunteer hours—so if

we did this in a government way, what would that cost be.

52

But there is an intangible, because people are saying if I can

transform a soul——

Mr. KIRK. Right, exactly.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. It is worth $1 million.

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And that is hard to quantify in a public debate because it may not save the taxpayer $1 million, but, you know, a

soul is priceless.

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And so some individuals would say this is my contribution that I want to leave and I am willing to go for really a

priceless return, whereas I would not give that in taxes or to the

government because while I might have the person stay out of jail

and maybe they can hold a job, they will not have transformed

their soul and their community. Therefore, I will give my money

to do that, but I will not forcibly take my money to give that. And

that is an intangible, as we work this through.

Well, I hope you can continue to expand. In the mentors, could

you describe some of the struggle of finding mentors in today’s society?

Mr. KIRK. One that you just mentioned, the time issue. That is

generally the major question when we present this to men’s groups

or churches and whatever. One of the major questions I get from

men is how much time realistically are we talking about. I say as

far as what we can tell you, you know, we do as that you are in

contact with your surrogate son every week, especially by phone.

But then if you are able, when he is having a basketball game or

he is being presented with an award or certificate at school, we

want you to be there. We certainly want you to remember his special days, like we had a boy whose father was killed the very night

he went to spend a week with his surrogate family. You know, that

was hard, he went to spend the night with them and the very

night, his father had got out of prison about 3 weeks before, he was

shot and killed.

Fortunately, he was with the surrogate family, who affirmed

him, but that is always a real hard time for him every time—it was

in June and it is always a hard time. In that the surrogate father

is aware of that, he is able to say look, I know what is going on,

you know, remember that the Lord is able to let him be your peace

and your refuge. There are those times.

So I always tell them, I say you want to love him like you do

your own children, obviously you cannot be with him every day, he

is not in your house every day. But if you will give some time in

praying for him every day, the affirmative, effectual prayers of a

righteous man availeth much. I say either you believe that or you

do not. Pray for him every day. And then be involved with his life.

Now the other thing is often I get the question, well, if I am of

a different race, culturally how is this going to work. I say love has

no boundaries, it does not. These boys, yeah, it is going to take you

a year probably, about a year and a half, before they actually begin

to really bond with you. It is for the long haul, even after they

graduate, you want them to be calling you back and saying what’s

going on in their lives, if they have a question, you know. Hey, Mr.

53

Onnie, what about this, how do I handle this—those kinds of

things.

So I would say the main question is the time and the question

of can I culturally be the father to this young man. One of our surrogate families lives—I do not know how much you know about

Nashville—but one of them lives in Belle Meade, which is the old

money area of Nashville. The boy lives in Edgehill Projects. I mean

the disparity there is great, yet when they come together, it is a

father and son. And they know that.

So I guess the issue, the main thing is the time commitment. But

the Lord has been faithful, you know, in bringing men, like I say,

who are high profile, who see the need. And I think part of their

reason for coming along, they say if we set the example, there will

be other men that follow.

I do not know if you are aware of this, Congressman, but the

faith-based initiative thing—and this is just for your information

and wherever you are leading in this—our Nation needs to be

aware of the spiritual principles because let us say that we fund

something that is antichrist, it is not going to bring a blessing on

our Nation. If we begin to fund something that denies Christ, denies the Lord, even though how wonderful faith-based may be, the

word of God says that is antichrist and we have to be aware of

that, even though some good things may come out. We cannot go

against his word and his principles.

Mr. SOUDER. My dilemma is that we are already funding billions

of those things. The question is can we get any faith extended in

that.

I strongly believe that the tax credit, tax deduction way, is the

strongest because then you could——

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. Go to your supporters and say you can

get an additional tax writeoff for aiding this and then you do not

have the controls. Also, some of the training funds with it.

But we are experimenting with the other and we will see if it

works. Where there are secular choices and you can get a voucher

and not have the restrictions. But I am concerned, I have kind of

looped twice on this issue over the years, as we work this through

with the particular challenges, and we all understand that mentoring is the golden solution, if we could find enough dollars and costs

and volunteers to do the mentoring. Most people are so exhausted,

but you can see, particularly—and we are trying to address these

things in our welfare reform where we have in effect given incentives to destabilization of families over time and we are trying to

readdress that, but when you go—often kind of the unknown phenomenon in America is the growth in middle class black families

and other minority families, but where they have been left behind,

it is now more dramatic because those areas are often 80, 90, 95

percent—it is not that there is not a male presence, it is that they

change all the time, there is not the biological continuity of a father

in the family. And those high risk kind of underclass is the traditional—where there is not a father present is just a huge challenge

and often it is the school principal or a teacher or a coach or somebody who touches them. How to figure out how to do this in an effective way—just one by one, I have—probably the most astounding

54

school I was in was Joe Clark’s, the guy with the baseball bat that

they made the movie about.

Mr. KIRK. Yeah.

Mr. SOUDER. And everybody kind of made him out to be—not everybody did, but many people thought he was kind of a villain,

what is he doing with a baseball bat, but the barbed wire around

the school, they were dealing drugs every which direction, you had

four teachers raped in one stairwell and you cannot have the kids

who want to learn, learn, if there is no order.

Mr. KIRK. Right.

Mr. SOUDER. But in walking around the school with him—today

they have 400 kids in that school—he knew a high percentage of

those kids’ names and you could see they would be at their lockers

or in the hall looking to see if he mentioned them by name. And

in so many cases, he was like their dad.

Mr. KIRK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And how we can address that question and recruit

more people to do that is one of our huge challenges because there

is a hunger for love that is incredible in areas where there is a lot

of turnover, and I just want to commend you and your volunteers

with that. We are trying to look at creative ways to do it, but you

have a—I do not want to see a program like yours compromised in

its effectiveness.

Mr. KIRK. Can I say that in the testimony, I list people like Dave

Townsend who started Wendy’s and Denzel Washington, Booker T.

Washington, George Washington Carver, Mark Twain—many of

them did not have their biological fathers but they went on to have

very successful and progressive lives. And what you just said, the

issue, the very last scripture in the Old Testament says ‘‘I will turn

the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers; lest I come and I will strike the earth with

a curse.’’ That is the very last thing he said in the Old Testament

because he realized that the identity of that child without the father would not be shaped, or a father figure, you know, a pastor,

a coach, a teacher.

If that could some way get to the Nation where they would understand, I think we have enough people in this Nation who would

believe the word and say look, that is what we are supposed to do,

that is James 1:27, pure religion undefiled, is to get at the fatherless, the orphans and the widows in their trouble. That is what it

says.

Let us do it and let us change our Nation. The statistics speak

for themselves. I do not know if you had a chance to read the testimony, but it talks about 63 percent of the rapists are fatherless.

It goes on and on about what has happened because of fatherless

men.

So thank you for allowing me to come and share. Hopefully it

helped in what we are trying to do in the Nation.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Lanz, I have just a couple more questions and

then we will wrap up here.

Could you provide us with a list—you do not have to today—of

in these different organizations you have enunciated, how we can

get in touch with them, get materials from each of them, where you

think their three to five best examples are in the country. In other

55

words, if you are in 28 States and have 59 facilities, where would

the three to five best be of Champions for Life, the Good News for

Jails, the Horizon group, the where has Gothard interacted with

your group, is it Johnny and Friends, is that——

Mr. LANZ. Johnny and Friends, uh-huh, Wheels for the World.

Mr. SOUDER. Is that Fran’s or Friends?

Mr. LANZ. Friends.

Mr. SOUDER. OK, that in identifying where these programs are

in two ways; one, that if you could show us here is one where they

really seem to have some results, here is one where we have a dynamic leader, here is one—a little bit of diversity of the types of

prisons. You know, some maybe are more toward juveniles, some

toward adults, some criminal, more violent, less violent. So we

can—one of the main ways we are going to approach through our

hearings will be in getting the testimony from the Houston Prison

where Prison Fellowship has taken over a wing in Houston and

they have now done that in a number of States, we want to look

further at your program because clearly we have incarcerated a lot

of young people in this country, and trying to figure out how—in

fact there is a ‘‘faith-based’’ program that the Department of Justice has initiated in my home town because in Fort Wayne, we

have 3,500 people who have been locked up the last few years who

are about to come out in the streets into one relatively small neighborhood and the question is how do you just not go right back to

where we were before, what is the process toward getting a job,

getting housing, getting mentors, getting any number of things.

And if we cannot address these questions, all we are doing is teaching them how to be better criminals.

Mr. LANZ. Would you like me to provide that——

Mr. SOUDER. Yes, to Liz and——

Mr. LANZ. May I add something?

Mr. SOUDER. Sure.

Mr. LANZ. So it is not lost in my brief overview, CCA has chaplains and mostly full time, a few sites have part time chaplains,

and what I want to really say is this, that to really improve and

enhance your program, to make a difference, that is why we turn

to these organizations. They are mainstream American organizations, a proven track record. Most importantly they depend a tremendous amount on donations from businesses and American contributors, but they are very effective at recruiting volunteers. And

through recruiting volunteers you can see that when I said it does

not supplant our program, but it enhances our program. We have

an existing program, we have chaplains in our facilities, but it was

just impossible in a 500-bed or a 1,500-bed, if you will, facility, to

reach all of these offenders and make a difference. And when you

develop this relationship with these providers that I mentioned and

because of their proven track record in recruiting Christian, if you

will, or volunteers that believe in God, you know, and truly make

a difference, that is seriously why I think I have been blessed to

have this opportunity to look at these organizations and work with

them to develop this relationship for my company, supported by

Jim Seaton, who literally—he is our chief operating officer—said

we are remiss if we neglect the spiritual development of our population.

56

And with Dennis Bradby echoing that, my vice president, I want

to say that is why we turned to these organizations that have a

proven track record utilizing wonderful volunteers to enhance our

programs.

Mr. SOUDER. I remember years ago when I was working for then

Congressman Coats, in character education, so often in political

terms we have to defend these activities in non-value ways, but one

of the things we learned was juvenile centers that have character

programs, not only improve the individual but they have less dissident problems internally, less problems in their lunchrooms, less

problems with beating each other up and there are tangible returns, inside order, inside the prison system in addition to for the

individual and after.

Mr. LANZ. Let me comment on that. Champions for Life in cooperation with CCA, we are doing some studies about the quality

of life and the incidence of behavior, inappropriate behavior, before

they provide a Weekend of Champions and their followup program,

and then after the program we do a followup to see what the difference is. I do not have hard facts, we are in the process, since

we just did this partnership to develop the mechanics to do this

study, but the wardens are sharing with me that once they make

that announcement and you compare the number of incidents before and after, it really, really makes a difference.

Right here at the Metro Davidson Jail for example—and I do not

know now many Americans know this, but the Institute for Community—the International Institute for Community Corrections reports that over 5 million people are released from jails annually,

OK? And that over 50 percent within several years recidivate, it is

just like revolving doors.

Well, here in Nashville, with Field Therapy, we have a grad student who is starting a study to try to determine recidivism. So

when an offender is released from the jail, we are keeping track

that he completed the program and so forth, because we have testimony that says it really makes a difference, but we are looking—

as a corporation, we are looking at maybe doing some studies that

really clearly demonstrate that. And I wanted to echo what you

said.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you. And all that kind of data is helpful.

One last question about your facilities. Many kind of county jails

and so on have—are also open access from other groups in a less

systematic way, is that true in your case? If a church or chaplains

or others wanted to have a program?

Mr. LANZ. Oh, without question.

Mr. SOUDER. Yeah.

Mr. LANZ. Without question. Our chaplains are expected to recruit volunteers so that the volunteers will provide services for all

faiths and one of the exciting things I will just simply say about

the Good News Jail and Prison Ministries, we are going to have a

training session for our chaplains. That is the goal. And the goal

is to train our chaplains to more effectively recruit, train and utilize volunteers to enhance the programs in the facilities because

there is an art to that, there is an art to recruiting volunteers and

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retaining and training volunteers so they do not get discouraged

and so that they want to be effective.

Mr. SOUDER. And if I was Muslim and I had from my Mosque,

I had somebody in prison and I wanted to come and visit them or

work with them, that would be allowed?

Mr. LANZ. Absolutely. I could demonstrate by policy, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. So in understanding—you are saying in many ways,

you are like a traditional facility where you would have a chaplain

and individual groups can come in to talk to anybody they want,

but you have laid this series of programs over the top.

Mr. LANZ. That is correct, that is the goal.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you very much for both your testimony

today as well as your work and the testimony of the people in the

first panel. It is always fascinating to actually get out from Washington and have this extended period, because usually we have

buzzers going off and any time you get us to focus for 5 minutes

on anything it is very amazing, so thank you for letting us come

today and we will look forward if you have any other information

and the followup data would be helpful as we do this series of hearings over the next year, year and a half.

With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 10:58 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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