Faith Based Programming in State of Ohio Prisons House Bill No. 113

The genesis of this controversy lies with H.B. 53 creating the Correctional Faith-Based Initiatives Task Force (CFBITF). This task force was to gather information on Faith Based Volunteer groups and their effects on the inmate populations' behavioral modification and recidivism rates and to determine what changes could be made to improve efficacy of the Faith Based efforts. This (CFBITF) found that current Faith based initiatives had no real, quantifiable or statistically measurable impact on either inmate behavioral modification or any measurable positive effect in regard to inmate recidivism rates.

Without going into a long draw out discussion as to what has been tried in the past to modify inmate behavior and reduce recidivism you can assume that a variety of things have been implemented in the past and most things have failed miserably. Those that haven't failed have had just a modicum of success. A modicum in the Penal System inevitably comes at an exorbitant and often prohibitive cost. That is why I and many others in Corrections and Rehabilitation understand why other low cost alternatives must be tried.

H.B. No. 113 was the brain child of this (CFBITF). They decided that there wasn't enough Faith Based programming to help and what was there was not implemented in an appropriately focused method.

The overview of the house Bill is as follows :

To enact sections 5120.034 and 5139.14 of the Revised Code to allow representatives of faith-based and other community organizations to provide reentry services to persons in the custody of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction or the Department of Youth Services.

You can read the entire Bill here: http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=127_HB_113_RH

There are many aspects of this House Bill that all of us in Corrections and Rehabilitation understand and the goals that the (CFBITF) appeared to have are laudable ones to be sure. However, the implementation and the underlying motivations of the (CFBITF) are dishonest, dangerous, inevitably empirically incorrect, and irresponsible and misleading to all the shareholders involved. All of this proposed change during a financial meltdown in our state.

The overall concept of Faith Based Initiatives and their Volunteers no one, on the surface anyway, could argue with. It's the underlying way in which Central Office is trying to implement and stack the deck to produce emperially incorrect data to prove a point and garner more state funding in an already financially troubled time. A time in which jobs and wages in the DR&C have been or are in the process of being cut, prisons are slated for closing, threats of early release of inmates on a mass scale, and further projected job cuts.

The way in which this program is being implemented is as follows:

First of all Prison Management and Central Office pick a particular dorm in a prison that is known for being a model prison in the State of Ohio. In this particular dorm they label it a faith based dorm and allow inmates in the Minimum security camp, that have a perceived preexisting predisposition toward religion and faith in God, to request transfer to that particular dorm.

Once the dorm is at least fifty percent and at most one hundred percent filled with inmates with said perceived religious predisposition, prison management, Central Office, and the Chaplin that is in charge of implementing the program then places a volunteer from the street to be posted in this particular dorm as a life councilor. He is posted in the dorm for at least eight hours a day in the living unit with these inmates. Some of these inmates have worked their way down in their security level to the minimum status after years of incarceration. These inmates are manipulative and some, despite their security level, still pose a threat to others. Now, not only is a civilian with no correctional training placed in harm's way, the regular Correctional staff is further tasked with providing for this civilians safety.

On the subject of this faith based volunteer, his or her qualifications, training, and background I submit the following:

This volunteer is selected by the Chaplin in charge of religious services. He is screened by the Chaplin and management does a minimal background check. The screening is a purely subjective process implemented by the Chaplin. There is no psychological testing. There are no criteria or special training or education needed. This volunteer is not even required to go to the Correctional Training Academy for even a basic course in corrections. This lack of training and lack of experience in corrections places this volunteer in a precarious position and places the staff in that area in further, unnecessary danger.

The overall goal that Central Office and Religious Services are trying to achieve, with this new concept, is as follows:

What is trying to be achieves here is to take a volunteer from off the street and place him in a prison dorm, that is packed with inmates with a religious predisposition, to help council inmates on life skills and job placement with faith in God and religion as the volunteers only tool. If this were to prove to be a success in regard to reducing recidivism Central Office would like to place a volunteer in every dorm in every prison across the state.

Obvious problems with this effort are as follows:

The first problem is the lack of training, education, and experience with offenders that this volunteer has can be potentially dangerous in a myriad of ways to him and to other staff. Secondly, any evidence and data that this program might produce in regards to reducing recidivism rates would be empirically incorrect because this dorm is stacked with inmates that are already, evidently, trying to turn their lives around with religion and faith in their God. Not every dorm is filled with these types of inmates. If the program is a perceived success in this particular dorm Central Office wants to use this as a template for all the dorms in every prison. Religious services will use this perceived success to garner more state funding in a financially troubled time, in a time when trained and educated case managers and unit managers are losing their jobs due to cuts in state funding. At the onset there is relatively little or no cost to the state or its tax payers but this blueprint, if successful, will be used to garner more state funding to implement this program on a state wide level. All based on empirically incorrect data, based on a stacked deck.

I as well as my co workers found out about this program in one of our many annual training classes. Every one of the line staff that attended this training was stunned at first and then that turned to disbelief and eventually to hostility towards the Chaplin as he tried to defend the State's decisions. He tried to shoot down every argument the line staff brought to his attention. The Chaplin was visibly upset by the time the class was over but he still stood by the State's flawed plan and never wavered. You might wonder why he would hold to this plan and defend it so rigorously? It all boils down to more funds allocated to his department from the State's budget and that is the bottom line.

After reading this anyone that possesses a nominal amount of common sense will understand what I mean when I call this attempt dishonest, dangerous, disingenuous, irresponsible and misleading to all the shareholders involved. Most people that I know have no problem with religion in the correctional setting and in fact religion can be useful in providing a moral code for offenders to follow. This new found moral code could lead to a productive life, one without crime. The only problem I see is the way in which this program is being implemented. It is dangerous and dishonest on so many levels.