Controversial Iowa prisoner rehabilitation program to end

WASHINGTON — A faith-based prisoner rehabilitation program in Iowa that was the subject of a court case will end this spring.

Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley said the Iowa Department of Corrections informed his Virginia-based ministry that the InnerChange Freedom Initiative program at the prison in Newton, Iowa, would conclude following the graduation of many of the program participants.

Earley said the action was expected because the ministry’s current contract with the prison system ends in June.

“They requested and required the stipulation that we take no more prisoners into the program during this coming year,” Earley said Feb. 27.

Fred Scaletta, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Corrections, said the prison system decided the program would end when the number of its participants dropped to less than 60, which will occur after a March 14 graduation of about two dozen people.

Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State had sued the program, saying it should not receive government funds because it is “pervasively religious.” In 2006, a federal judge agreed and ordered the program to repay more than $1.5 million the program had received since it began its relationship with the corrections department in 1999.

An appeals court later upheld that decision but lowered the amount InnerChange had to return to the state.

In light of the court action, a $310,000 state appropriation to the program, which housed inmates in a separate unit, was halted as of July 1. Earley said InnerChange returned almost $200,000 to Iowa and relies on private funding, not government money, for its nine programs in several states.

— ABP