CHARLES COLSON (Founder, Prison Fellowship Ministries): There is a great danger in the prisons, and I have seen this first hand, of radical Islam taking a real hold. People in prisons are very alienated from society, very angry, most of them. If they can get a Christian influence, where we're taught to love the Lord with all our heart and mind and soul, to love our neighbor as ourself, I think that's a great thing.

DE SAM LAZARO: However, critics say the Inner Change program violates the Constitution. They say the program amounts to government endorsement of one religion -- that prisoners may feel coerced to join it, just to get rehabilitation benefits.

Reverend BARRY LYNN (Americans United for Separation of Church and State): When Chuck Colson talks about Christianity, it is the fundamentalist, biblical literalism that he's preaching. He has every right to promote it privately. He has no right to expect that the government of Texas or anyplace else is going to help promote it in their prisons.

DE SAM LAZARO: Lawyer and ordained minister Barry Lynn's group wants to block Inner Change and has brought suit against the program in Iowa. That state charges inmates a fee to use the telephone and uses the proceeds to partially fund Inner Change.

Iowa officials declined to be interviewed. But they have argued the state money supports only nonreligious parts of the program, like job training, not the ministry.

In Texas, corrections officials claim their program is legally airtight. They say it's voluntary, and Prison Fellowship runs it with no operating funds from the state.

DON KEIL (Texas Department of Criminal Justice): We are concerned with reducing recidivism rate amongst our inmate population such that it would save money for the state of Texas. If this program does that, then from the state's objective, we have accomplished what we had purposed to do.

DE SAM LAZARO: And so far, Keil says, the program has shown promise toward that goal. Inner Change officials are far more upbeat.

MARK EARLEY (President, Prison Fellowship Ministries): The state of Texas just recently completed a study, in February of this year, showing that of all the inmates that have been through our program, that the recidivism rate was eight percent. That was compared to 22 percent of the closest control group they could find, and about 50 percent of the recidivism rate of the general population.

DE SAM LAZARO: Barry Lynn questions the validity of the research. In any event, he adds, you would expect success.

Rev. LYNN: If the choice is between a program that does nothing for you, as we found in Iowa, or a program that helps you stay in touch with your family, keep grounded in the community, and guarantee you a job afterwards, of course you're going to do better if you have all those benefits. It seems to me that corrections officials ought to offer it to everyone, not just those people who choose to undergo a religious conversion on the way to getting these benefits.

DE SAM LAZARO: If it passes muster legally, Prison Ministries seems poised to grow. It is a prolific fund raiser, and the idea of faith-based groups providing social services has the support of conservatives in Washington, led by President Bush. He wants to provide federal funds for such initiatives.

Professor IRA LUPU (George Washington University Law School): You have politicians who for political reasons or for genuine good public service reasons have attached themselves to that trend. And the president is one of them, who says, "Listen, I know that evangelical faiths may help people better their lives. And why shouldn't government help provide the resources to do that?"

DE SAM LAZARO: The courts will soon grapple with that question in the Iowa case. The result could determine whether this Texas program, first of its kind when it was launched here under then-Governor George W. Bush, will become a model for the faith-based program President Bush is encouraging



For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Fred De Sam Lazaro in Richmond, Texas.