Community, Housing, and Jobs Matter, NOT Doctrine: Weighing the Evidence of Faith-based Prison Ministries
Warning: This blog is longer than my other blogs. I believe it was important to be comprehensive in a short format, balanced, and to cite and quote my sources directly on my conclusions that may feel uncomfortable for those persons highly invested in Chrisitan ministry. I take a critical look at the claims made by Christ-based ministries in reentry and in addiction recovery. The reader should note that my website is peppered with the message of radical hospitality in the Gospel. Take note of my Scripture blog here on my website. I have tried to be fair while adhering to my commitment to this website of promoting evidenced-based claims about policy interventions, not claims driven by personal emotions or zeal.
The Issue
Approximately 600,000-650,000 state and federal prisoners are released every year. If juvenile offenders are included, that number rises to 700,000. This is a pressing social and economic issue for policy makers, state and federal legislatures, local governments, social service agencies, and the public. On average, it costs $44,000 per year to house an inmate or $120 per day (x 2 million persons incarcerated in the U.S. = $81 billion per year). The recidivism rate, or the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense, is an important metric to understanding the economic costs, social costs, and personal costs to individuals, families, and communities.
Recidivism rates are caused by a multitude of factors (another blog forthcoming on this matter in more detail), but one important variable is time. Approximately 43% of formerly incarcerated persons are arrested and incarcerated within one year of release. As time goes on post-incarceration, rearrests increase to 68% in 3 years, 79% in 6 years, and 83% in 9 years.
In addition to the direct costs of incarceration, the costs to communities are enormous. Formerly incarcerated individuals are 10x more likely to be homeless and 60% are unemployed a year later, seeking work but unable to find it. When the formerly incarcerated do obtain a job, they earn significantly less than their non-incarcerated counterparts because of the stigma attached to their criminal record.
Rise of Big Prison Ministry and Faith-based Prisons
So, what to do? Enter Big Prison Ministry. Dominated mostly by nondenominational Christian churches and organizations, most considered evangelical, these organizations have been on the forefront in prison ministry mostly behind bars. However, their role is somewhat curious in that they have worked to create both the supply of prisoners and the demand for prison ministry programs.
Aaron Griffith is an Assistant Professor of modern American History at Whitworth University, a former fellow at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, and instructor at Washington University’s Prison Education Project. Griffith’s new book—God's Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America—addresses this issue.
“Prisons have long held an irresistible theological attraction to evangelicals, Griffith argues, because conservative Christians have seen them as centers of both law and grace—that is, places where sinners are punished but also places where many find redemption. As early as the 1920s, American evangelicals saw a moral dimension to the nation’s crime wave. While liberal Protestants thought that social reform could reduce crime, evangelicals saw crime as a consequence of rejecting God—which made gospel preaching the best antidote.”
Aaron writes “crime and punishment simply mattered for evangelicals” and “that they not only lobbied for polices and voted to help build America’s carceral state, they helped make it appealing to other citizens.” Incarceration rates exploded under their influence from 161 persons per 100,000 population in 1972 to 767 in 2010. According to Pew Research, the U.S. is by far the most self-reporting religious country compared to our Canadian and western European peers. Yet, 50% of Americans have an immediate family member who has been incarcerated.
The Big Prison Ministry evangelicals contrast with their more liberal mainline counterparts who see crime and incarceration in structural terms and who are more oriented towards systemic justice and change. One of the biggest evangelical players in this area is Prison Fellowship, founded by Chuck Colson in 1976 of Watergate fame who served time in prison for being President Nixon’s "Dirty Tricks" or "Hatchet Man." He had a “Come to Jesus” moment while in prison and when released he saw his personal mission to go into prisons to convert residents to Christianity. This is consistent with his autobiography Born Again.
To be fair, evangelicals are a tough group to pigeon-hole. Equal Justice USA is a national evangelical nonprofit organization that also works in the prison and incarceration arena. Their vision is to “break the cycles of trauma by promoting and strengthening alternative responses to violence… and to transform justice from a system of punishment and harm to one of healing, equity, and genuine accountability.” Compare to the vision statement for Prison Fellowship “to see all affected by crime reconciled to God, their families, and their communities.”
But does it work?
Does shoving Bibles into prisons and converting prisoners with faith-based rehabilitation programs work? Beyond religious conversion, do these types of programs reduce recidivism or reduce reincarceration? This is where we started in the beginning of this blog. The whole public policy point is to reduce the economic, social and personal costs to society of a revolving door of incarceration. I asked myself, “Who studies this, if anybody?”. Emotional arguments are often made about the efficacy of faith-based prison programs, but when pressed, proponents provide little evidence to back up their claims. Though information is scarce, this question is being studied and there is enough evidence, or lack of, to draw some conclusions.
Dan Mears is an associate professor at Florida State University who evaluated the extant research. Per his findings, “faith-based prison programs claim to reduce recidivism, but there's little evidence.” This is Dan Mears:
"We undertook this review while evaluating a faith-based prisoner reentry program. During that evaluation, we found precious little theoretical foundation or empirical research," he said. "What we did find was weak support for a religion-crime relationship, inconsistent measurements of 'faith' and 'religion,' few methodologically rigorous studies, and significant questions about program implementation and the theoretical foundations of faith-based initiatives."
Mears points to Prison Fellowship and their claims of lower recidivism rates among their program participants. However, Mears noted that studies on Prison Fellowship outcomes “focused only on inmates who completed the program, while comparing its recidivism rates to those of all participants—including dropouts—of selected secular programs.”
“In fact, if recidivism rates in Colson's programs were revised to include all participants, "graduates" or not, results would be worse than those for the comparison groups. Where successes might be construed to exist, it's unclear what to credit—the computer and life skills classes or its fundamentalist Christian doctrine. Like arguments that faith-based programs decrease recidivism, this possibility remains to be demonstrated empirically.” (Libby Fairhurst, FSU News)
The above quoted paragraph describes the problem of mediating variables which in a very similar way also interfere with the claims of religious-based addiction recovery programs. It is the problem of mediating variables like community, housing, jobs and the overall social and economic environment where a person will reenter. Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) claims are diluted by the same issue. Is it the “higher power, Jesus, God” or is it peer support, already known to be effective in non-religious programs, that is the key ingredient. To illustrate my point, A.A. and Celebrate Recovery do not outperform other non-religious addiction recovery programs despite some claims otherwise. Keep reading to find out the key ingredients to stemming recidivism.
As a side bar, A.A., which courts have ruled a religious organization and which patriarchal structure pushes women away, also points to the successes of people sitting (dominated by men) in their meetings. However, A.A. ignores 7-8 out of 10 participants where the program failed them. A.A. will point out that “they failed the program, not that “the program failed them.” The best tool is the tool that people use. On both fronts, addiction and recidivism research, bad science can masquerade as evidence.
Compared to What?
To claim a program is effective requires a claim to be compared to a counterfactual alternative. It is not enough to make an emotional claim because your faith is strong. More effective compared to what? In an article in the Journal of Criminal Justice, “Faith-based efforts to improve prisoner reentry: Assessing the logic and evidence”, the four authors state:
“Faith-based prisons continue to be promoted as promising avenues for reform, chiefly on the grounds that they improve prison discipline and reduce recidivism. Unfortunately—even if we ignore the constitutional issues— most of the empirical studies of the effectiveness of faith-based prisons have serious methodological problems and, to the extent they find any positive effect of faith-based prisons, can’t be taken at face value. Those few empirical studies that approach methodological validity either fail to show that faith-based prisons reduce recidivism or provide weak evidence in favor of them.”
“The most serious problem with studies of the effectiveness of faith-based prisons is the self-selection problem. Prisoners obviously choose faith-based prisons voluntarily. And the factors that would make a prisoner choose a faith-based prison may also make him less likely to commit crimes in the future. (One such factor might be religiosity itself). Also, a prisoner who takes the trouble to choose a rehabilitative program may be more motivated to change, and this may make him more likely to change.”
The self-selection problem is the same problem plaguing A.A.’s claims of success and also the claims of other religious addiction recovery groups like Celebrate Recovery. Again, the best tool is the tool that people use. In a New York Times article that you first seem to get excited about, Alcoholics Anonymous vs. Other Approaches: The Evidence Is Now In: An updated review shows it performs better than some other common treatments and is less expensive”, you read down and later in the article find a claim that A.A. success rates are between 22% and 37%. These A.A. rates are compared to other treatment program success rates between 15% and 25%. A mean or median success rate of 30% or 3/10 is considered a success in public health!? Ignoring any methodological issues or population sampling, 3/10 is not much better than the 2/10 mean or median of other programs not specifically named when talking significant differences! (see “The Surprising Failures of 12 Steps — How a pseudoscientific, religious organization birthed the most trusted method of addiction treatment” ). The NY Times article goes further:
“Rigorous study of programs like Alcoholics Anonymous is challenging because people self-select into them. Those who do so may be more motivated to abstain from drinking than those who don’t.
Unless a study is carefully designed, its results can be driven by who participates, not by what the program does. Even randomized trials can succumb to bias from self-selection if people assigned to A.A. don’t attend, and if people assigned to the control group do.”
For a more detailed discussion on the lack of evidence-based research on addiction, see my blog post here.
What Does Work
It is not enough for an offender "to see the light" writes the American Enterprise Institute in “The Importance of the Company You Keep: The Effectiveness of Social Support Interventions for Prisoners.” . Not exactly a liberal or progressive think tank if you are wondering about bias in this blog.
“When it comes to staying out of trouble, the study shows it is more important that returning citizens continue to see the effect of that light in the community around them when they come home. This suggests that in addition to making voluntary religious programming easily accessible behind the walls, more emphasis should be placed on encouraging corrections systems and local probation and parole offices to partner with faith institutions in a serious and meaningful way to create points of community connection for returning citizens.”
“The other key finding from the study is that recidivism is much easier to combat when communities are flourishing economically. The study found depressed economies diminished the protective effect of religion, positing that the discouragement and disillusionment over the reality of prolonged unemployment is an aggravating factor in re-arrest. Boosting economic opportunity in zip codes with large numbers of returning citizens and fostering community-justice system partnerships, while “layering-in” specific employment and training services, should be seen as necessary complements to sustaining criminal desistance rooted in religious and moral change.”
Community, Housing, and Jobs
Faith-based programs are not harmful to the participants and to the extent they help a small, motivated group, they can be useful. But policy makers and legislatures should be aware of the limits and shortcomings of proponents’ claims before investing too heavily.
The U.S. spends $81 billion a year on mass incarceration. Approximately 600,000- 650,000 people a year are released from correctional facilities, but funding for reentry services including housing is minimal compared to the amount spent on incarceration. “Reentry programs are run on borrowed money with scotch tape and sealing wax” says Jennifer Ortiz, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Indiana University Southeast. See my blog post “Housing, Reentry, and Who Benefits From Homelessness” here.
Studies suggest that religion can help prisoners cope with prison life and that it may affect the likelihood of recidivism. A new longitudinal study examined how male prisoners' religious beliefs affected their reentry into the community. The study found that men with stable or increasing religious beliefs did not have better reentry-related outcomes than men with decreasing religious beliefs.
"Numerous barriers, including finding and maintaining jobs, securing housing, renewing ties with family and others, prevent religion from effectively supporting the reentry process for many incarcerated men, which can encourage relapse," says Iman Said, a doctoral candidate in sociology and criminology at Penn State, who led the study. "Our findings call into question prison-based religious programs as the sole way to reduce recidivism and boost post-release success and suggest a lack of a relationship between religious beliefs and recidivism."
"The study's findings have implications for prison-based programming," according to Kim Davidson, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at FSU, who coauthored the study. "Religious programs are popular with the public and with policymakers, many of whom believe that religion can change the disposition of incarcerated people, resulting in a prosocial person who will successfully reenter society. But these programs may not improve individuals' reentry into the community."
In Christian communities and in an overwhelming Christian nation, we want to believe religious conversion is positively correlated with reduced crime and reduced recidivism. We need to look past our emotions. Religion plays an important role in reentry initiatives, but its effects wane over time. It’s the “bread and butter” and “social support” programs that emanate from our religious commitments and where religious communities have an impact. Successful reentry lies not in the religious conversion of the prisoner, but in the compassion, solidarity, community, and acts of radical hospitality of those supporting the incarcerated and those reentering. (These are part of the mission and core values of Stand 4 Count). Then will those persons reentering ask, “Why are they helping me?” and begin to explore the message of the Gospel.
