For the past year the Missouri Department of Corrections has been considering a faith-based treatment program being promoted by Prison Fellowship Ministries. This organization was founded in 1976 by Chuck Colson, a former aide to President Nixon who was convicted and served time in the Watergate scandal.

Known as InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI), the program is designed to reduce recidivism by preparing inmates to return to society through an intensive pre-release exposure to faith-based programming. Anchored in a Christ-centered, biblical teaching approach, the program consists of three phases. Phase one includes a heavy emphasis on rebuilding individual spiritual and moral principles. Phase two promotes inmates using a value system in real-life settings. Phase three begins when the inmate is released and helps the individual build relationships in the community through families, churches and the workplace.

Prison Fellowship opened its first InnerChange program in the United States in a minimum-security prison outside Houston, Texas in 1997. Since then InnerChange programs have also been started in prisons in Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota. InnerChange has been closely linked with President’s Bush faith-based initiatives.

While fundamentalist Christian groups have touted the merits of InnerChange, the program has not been without controversy.

The Missouri Catholic Conference has been monitoring the efforts of Prison Fellowship Ministries to bring the InnerChange program to Missouri. Last summer members of the Public Policy Committee of the MCC visited the InnerChange program at Newton, Iowa. The MCC then consulted with other Catholic conferences and religious leaders in other states who were familiar with the InnerChange program. These inquiries resulted in concerns about how aspects of the Catholic faith were treated by the InnerChange program. Should the InnerChange program be implemented in Missouri, the MCC hopes to prevent some of the problems that have arisen in other states.

Two lawsuits have been filed —one on behalf of a Mormon inmate and the other on behalf of family members of other inmates — accuse Iowa state officials and InnerChange of numerous violations against the First Amendment. These include: 1) that the program uses government funds to support religious indoctrination, 2) the program discriminates against inmates who are not willing to subscribe to the tenets of fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, 3) that the program and prison officials illegally give preferential treatment to inmates who agree to be part of its program while not offering the same privileges to the general prison population.

Oral arguments in the case took place in October, 2004, before Iowa’s Southern District Court. The decision is still pending.

Prison Fellowship Ministries has been interested in bringing the InnerChange program to Missouri prisons for several years. In March of 2005, the Missouri Department of Corrections put out a request for proposal (RFP) to begin a faith based transitional release program at the women’s prison in Vandalia and at the Algoa Correctional Center for men in Jefferson City. While several organizations that provide transitional services to inmates attended a pre-proposal conference about the RFP, only Prison Fellowship submitted an RFP. In the RFP Prison Fellowship offered to provide the InnerChange program free to Missouri for the one-year contract period. At the time of this writing the Department of Corrections is still in negotiation with Prison Fellowship Ministries about details of their proposal. A final decision regarding the awarding of the contract to Prison Fellowship is expected to come in mid-August.