Op-Ed
Fall Break in Miami (Dade County Jail)
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Heartless, Not Stupid
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While most of Cornell returned home to visit their families, some of us made the wise decision to drive 22 hours down to Miami. And while most students returned to Cornell with stories that can be summed up with: “I just chilled with my friends from home;” there were still some of us whose tales of Columbus Day escapades begin with, “So, she tells me that I have the right to remain silent and for some reason I couldn’t excercise it …”
Anyone who can affiliate with that latter group (under conditions of anonymity) will state the obvious: prison is no fun, which makes sense because … well, it shouldn’t be. Because it is not fun, it would be logical to infer that most people would learn their lesson the first time and maybe rethink their ways.
This, however, is simply not the case. And for this reason, the government has taken it upon itself to not only protect society from criminals, but to correct criminal behavior as well. The latter has proved a more formidable task.
Charles Colson, of Watergate fame, chose to join the government in its fight to help convicts reform upon his release from federal prison. And his formula to conquering cyclical criminality has proven very effective. In fact, a University of Pennsylvania study conducted by sociologist Dr. Byron Johnson found that Colson’s InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) saw its participants rearrested at half the rate of regular inmates (17.3 percent vs. 35 percent). Meanwhile, only 8 percent of inmates found themselves reincarcerated a second time, a far cry from the 20 percent of the study’s control group who returned to their cells within 2 years of their release.
The IFI and its volunteers have achieved these results using a very simple method. Volunteers help to prepare inmates for their integration into society through educational means and values based teachings. Once participants have finished with phase one of the process, volunteers then help the inmates organize community service projects.
Dr. Johnson noticed several common characteristics of prisoners who had finished the program. The values-based teachings, he observed, evoked a greater sense of remorse and purpose from the participants. The IFI had found a way to replace the values of prison that surround the inmate with a more normative moral code, encouraging personal responsibility and service.
It would seem that the IFI had dealt crime a tremendous blow.
Sadly for Mr. Colson, the public and future victims of crime, Iowa’s Judge Robert Pratt was not as enthused; and he felt it his duty to declare the IFI unconstitutional and fine Colson’s charitable organization, Prison Fellowship Ministries, $1.7 million. The IFI crossed the line, you see, by using Bible study in rehabilitating dangerous men; or, as the Washington Post’s Alan Cooperman described it, as “immersing” the willing volunteers in Christianity. This, Judge Pratt reasoned, just would not do, as there are no coinciding secular programs of rehabilitation.
Obviously, Judge Pratt is slightly out of touch with Correctional Facilities. There is no better example of secular Darwinism. Any kind of moral code is thrown out the window: survival of the fittest is the law of the land for the inmates, who descend to the level of beasts. Secular rehabilitation programs are present everywhere within the penitentiary gates.
IFI: Encourages Kansas inmates to give back by refurbishing wheelchairs, canes and crutches for the NPO Wheelchairs for the World. The inmates learn how to give to elderly women, rather than snatch their purses, because it is the right thing to do.
Secular/Darwinism (S/D): Teaches inmates to give Otis your whoopee pie because he’s bigger than you.
IFI: Uses Holy Water to baptize inmates, to encourage them to open their hearts to God.
S/D: Uses shower water to provide an opportunity for inmates to open their … well you get the picture (the jury is not yet out regarding the potential threat to marriage this poses).
IFI: Gives prisoners a personal relationship with God.
S/D: Gives prisoners a personal relationship with Curly.
IFI: “Coerces” its volunteers using Second Samuel.
S/D: “Ice Pick” Anthony coerces inmates using a soap shank.
I give the esteemed judge credit. He has a way with words; by the third page of his opinion he had me convinced the Inquisition was upon us. He reviewed a non-denominational faith-based charity program dedicated to teaching willing volunteer the power of love and mercy and came back with … coercion. According to Pratt “[although] an inmate could, theoretically, graduate from IFI without … Christianity, the coercive nature of the program demands obedience to its dogmas and doctrine.”
The IFI’s doctrine, after all, is characterized by dogmas condemning stealing and killing: just the kind of close-minded philosophy that our founding fathers rose up against.
Faith-based organizations terrify liberals because such programs undermine the reverence liberals show to their god … the welfare state; they don’t people thinking there is anything bigger. Programs like IFI challenge liberals’ faith that government is always the solution. Helping convicts adopt a sense of self responsibility through faith diminishes the liberal position that crime is to the fault of society.
America’s flight from faith, piloted by the imagined philosopher kings of the judiciary, has erased any sense of right and wrong, which is why the secular means of rehabilitating criminals have never been effective. It would, after all, be far easier to remind defendants of a decent moral code if people did not have them removed from courthouse lawns.
Billy McMorris is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at wjm27@cornell.edu. John Manetta Once Told Me appears Tuesdays.
This arcticle helped me
This arcticle helped me emmensly and i would personally like to thank you. With out values being instilled in the individual while in prison, how likely is he or she to succeed?? well we can look at statistics for thst answer.