The government can buy the desks, but not the Bibles. Bush's critics such as Marc Stern, a lawyer for the American Jewish Congress in New York, says trying to separate the religious from the secular elements of a program like InnerChange is absurd, because the Bible is the program. Innerchange was founded by Chuck Colson, a former Richard Nixon aide who found God while serving a seven-month jail term for Watergate related offences. InnerChange is at the extreme end of the faith-based movement. Inmates volunteer for 18 months of live-in, rigorous study and fairly orthodox courses on anger management and substance abuse.
Bible passages have to be memorised, and television is banned.
Nationally, recidivism is stuck at 50per cent. Iowa's InnerChange director Sam Dye says that as long as the program is voluntary, and there are secular alternatives, there should be no objection to a Christian program. It should receive state funding for its work in substance abuse and its other non-religious courses. He is convinced that recidivism will drop, but more importantly, that inmates will become better fathers, husbands, and citizens. It's a whole different way of looking at it.