Saint Leo University Faith Based Programs and Corrections Paper Your readings this week includes a paper on faith-based programs in prisons to, drug treatm

Saint Leo University Faith Based Programs and Corrections Paper Your readings this week includes a paper on faith-based programs in prisons to, drug treatment, and gender issues associated with incarcerated women. For this module, your assignment is to write a critical response on one of the following issues: 1. What stressors exist for incarcerated women? 2. What are the issues with faith-based programs? 3. Does incarceration of women increase the victimization? What programs would you recommend for incarcerated women and why would treatment be a trend? Your response should go beyond the obvious, include additional research, and be written at a graduate level. Your answer must be no less than 1000 words with three resources. Any resources including but not limited to professional journals and/or books published within the last 5 years, using the APA style and listed at the bottom of your posting. To complete this assignment, you must respond using logic and reason to three other student postings. Discuss your thoughts on the information that has been posted. Discuss its relevance and implications to the field of Corrections. Some postings may require the student to find an article online in reference to a timely topic. Write a brief summary of the article and post the full URL. Your remarks can be opinion, but they must be based on experience, research and/or prior learning. The paper must be in APA format and include a title page, abstract, discussion, conclusion, and references. Wikipedia is not an appropriate source for any scholarly writing and is not permitted for any assignment in this program. Your paper should go beyond the obvious and must be at least 1000 words in length. You must use at least three resources to support your position. Remember, all resources including, but not limited to, journals, magazines, and/or books must be properly cited using APA style and published within the last 5 years. APA has a new edition. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (2020). 7th Edition, Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association. Avoid using gender his/her, use they/theirs. The assignments within this class are to be the student’s original work. The student is permitted to use no more than 15% of other’s quoted work. As an FYI, “Running head:” no longer precedes the short title on the Title page. Avoid the 1st person for all formal papers. As per APA standards, use headline caps for Level 1 headings. Please consult the APA style manual regarding the formatting of citations with 3+ authors. An Exploration into Participation in a Faith-Based Prison Program
Scott D. Camp
Jody Klein-Saffran
Okyun (Karl) Kwon
Dawn M. Daggett
Victoria Joseph
April 25, 2006
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Office of Research and Evaluation
320 First Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20534
scamp@bop.gov
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those
of the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the U.S. Department of Justice.
An Exploration into Participation in a Faith-Based Prison Program
Research Summary
The current research investigates the faith, socio-demographic, psychological, and criminal
history factors associated with the decision to volunteer for a faith-based program. Operational
records were combined with data collected from self-administered surveys. The results of the
logistic regression model were successful in identifying factors related to program participation,
including factors not included in previous studies. The findings suggest that program participants
are motivated to make changes in their lives and are seeking their way in a religious sense. For
example, program participants scored higher on average on the motivation for change scale used
here, had higher rates of attendance in religious services since incarceration, and were more
active in reading sacred scripture. Conversely, inmates who claimed higher levels of knowledge
about their faith were less likely to participate in the Life Connections Program examined here.
Policy Implications
The results of the analysis suggest that certain religious characteristics are associated with
participation in a faith-based program. The implication is that religious program providers need
to pay attention to the match between the program content and the characteristics of their
potential program participants. The results also demonstrate the need to capture differences
between participants and comparison subjects on dimensions not usually included in evaluations
of faith-based programs. Without knowledge of the selection process, there is no way to
determine whether observed differences between program participants and “comparisons” are
due to actual program effects or are an artifact of pre-existing differences between the groups.
Introduction
People of faith have consistently shown an interest in working with felons incarcerated in
prisons to help bring about their rehabilitation. In fact, many terms associated with prisons, such
as rehabilitation, reformatory and penitentiary, came into existence because of the reformative
efforts of people of faith in the late 18th Century. The early reformers typically wanted to
construct the physical architecture and the practices within the modern prison in ways that would
encourage inmates to be transformed or more accurately reformed while serving their sentences
(Rothman, 1995).
In recent times, faith groups have provided vital services within prisons, such as
supplementing in-house ministries, mentoring inmates, providing traditional services such as
Bible studies, and running programs such as release preparation. Despite these far-reaching
efforts, formal rehabilitation programs were not usually associated with a faith agenda and were
the domain of the medical and behavioral sciences. This has changed in the very recent past as
faith groups have become involved in offering formal programs within prison to bring about not
only the spiritual salvation of the inmates but their rehabilitation in the profane world as well.
Prison Fellowship, for example, operates the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, a 24-hour, 7-day a
week Christian prison program for the state of Texas at the Carol Vance Unit. Kairos operates
several residential programs known as Kairos Horizon Communities in Florida, Ohio, Texas, and
Oklahoma. While the new programs do not represent a break with the traditional roles of faith
groups in prison, they do represent a new level of intensity.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) started a pilot faith-based program known as the
Life Connections Program (LCP) in 2002. The LCP is an eighteen-month, residential program.
Cohorts of LCP participants begin six months apart, so there are usually three cohorts operating
concurrently at any one time at each site. To be eligible for the program, an inmate must be
releasable in the U.S., have fulfilled ESL obligations, have completed or be completing GED
obligations, be meeting financial responsibilities, and be within 24 to 60 months of release.
High-security male inmates and female inmates have modified requirements for time from
release. For high-security male inmates, there is no requirement, and for females they must be
within 24 and 120 months of release. A typical cohort has between 30 and 50 inmates. A key
feature of the BOP program is its explicit multi-faith accommodation. The LCP program offers a
core curriculum that is taught by spiritual guides who are hired from the local religious
communities. Depending upon the religious composition of the inmates in the respective LCP
programs, four or five spiritual guides from different faiths — such as Islam, Catholicism,
Buddhism, Protestant denominations, and Judaism — work with inmates of the corresponding
faiths at each prison. The spiritual guides incorporate their own faith traditions within the context
of teaching the core materials of textbooks and journaling exercises that all LCP inmates
complete. In effect, while there are common activities for all cohort members of all faiths, each
LCP cohort is in effect comprised of four or five smaller groups of inmates of similar faith that
work, study, and “pray” together. The program also includes an after-prison component.
Volunteers of America has a contract to identify appropriate faith groups in the release
community that will support inmate reentry, and the inmates are connected with a volunteer
mentor. The inmates also work with a volunteer mentor as part of the LCP program while
incarcerated, but this mentor is different from the post-release mentor.
The present study was designed to examine the types of inmates who volunteer for
participation in LCP. The examination of who volunteers for LCP participation in the BOP
serves two related purposes. First, it helps program administrators and policy makers identify the
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characteristics of inmates who are likely candidates for participation in the LCP program.
Second, it allows researchers to better understand the selection process and the attending issues
of selection bias for analyses of outcomes associated with program participation. For example,
future reports planned by these authors will look at the impact of program participation upon
both institutional and post-release adjustment. The analyses provided here will allow these
studies to be informed about the factors associated with self-selection into the program when
designing a comparison of program participants and control subjects with a quasi-experimental
design. Without the background work of the current analysis, the outcome studies would produce
biased estimates of the effects of program participation.
The current study progresses by first examining what is known about the benefits of
religion in preventing criminal behavior. The literature review highlights that there has been little
formal evaluation of the effects of religious programs upon recidivism, even though there is a
long and important history of religious programs in prisons. More to the point of this report,
there has been little work done to either substantively understand the types of inmates who
participate in religious programs or control for issues of selection when constructing comparison
groups for evaluations of religious programs. The data used to conduct the analyses are described
in the section following the literature review. A presentation and discussion of the findings is
then presented before the paper concludes with a discussion of the general findings and their
implications.
Literature Review
In the past, “rehabilitation” was the term used to describe efforts to prepare inmates for
release from prison, and the religious overtones of the term suggest that inmates could be
changed morally after following a specific regimen. The link between penology and religion in
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the United States can be traced to the 18th century (Latessa & Allen, 1997; Wright, 1987), and
many students of the modern prison note that religious thought and values had a great deal of
influence on developing modern, secular prison practices (Rothman, 1995; Young, Gartner,
O’Connor, Larson, & Wright, 1995). During this time period, religious groups, such as the
Quakers, wanted to come into prisons and rehabilitate inmates. Under Quaker philosophy, a
major goal of confinement was penance through required Bible study and reflection upon one’s
sins (Clear & Cole, 1997; Sumter & Clear, 2005). According to Clear and Cole (1997), religious
programs in the correctional setting have been the single most common form of institutional
programming for inmates. The programs are used for both the management of inmates as well as
rehabilitation. Clear takes this observation a step further and claims that the history of
incarceration is intimately intertwined with religious movements. Current terminology for
programming inmates for post-release in the community is “reentry.” Some of the more recent
reentry programs in prison have a religious, or what is often called a faith-based component.
Despite the pervasive role of religion in the modern prison, a review of the criminological
literature identifies few studies that address theoretically or empirically how religion acts as a
social control mechanism. Sixteen years ago, Garner and his colleagues (1990) reported on a
systematic review of the sociological, psychological and criminal justice literature and concluded
that most criminal justice researchers studied religious commitment variables only infrequently.
Further, Garner, et al. wrote: “There is almost a complete absence of research on the relationship
between religion and religious rehabilitation programs with recidivism” (1990: 15). More recent
literature reviews on rehabilitation programs have demonstrated that religion is not evaluated as
an intervention as often as would be expected given the preponderance of religious programming
(Johnson, 2004). Generally speaking, the studies that do exist have found an inverse relationship
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between religion and recidivism or in-prison misconduct (Johnson, 2004; Johnson, De Li,
Larson, & McCullough, 2000; Johnson, Larson, & Pitts, 1997; Kerley, Matthews, & Blanchard,
2005; Young et al., 1995). Usually, though, the effect for religion was found only for the inmates
who were most involved in the program, not for everyone who took the religious program
(Johnson & Larson, 2003; O’Connor & Perreyclear, 2002; Sumter, 1999). The problem with
these latter types of findings is that the studies do not have properly constructed comparison
groups against which to compare subsets of the program participants. Instead, the only valid
comparison in most of the studies is between all program participants and the comparison group.
This problem, often called selection bias, is discussed in greater detail below in a review of the
evaluation of the InnerChange Freedom Initiative (Johnson & Larson, 2003).
The lack of scientific attention on the role of religion in criminal justice writ large or
inmate rehabilitation writ small may reflect an uneasy relationship between the sacred world of
religion and the profane concerns of science. Many in the faith community openly question
whether the evidence-based and logical nature of science is appropriate for dealing with religious
issues. Within the social science community, Knepper (2003) expressed concern about the limits
of social science in dealing with religion. Even for those in the faith community who do not
emphasize the conflict between the evidence-basis of science and the faith-basis of religion, there
is still often an acknowledgment that the effects of prison programs upon recidivism are
irrelevant as the true goal of the programs is the spiritual enrichment of the inmates (Breuilly,
O’Brien, & Palmer, 1995).
Despite the general lack of sustained theoretical development or empirical evidence, there
is some research in different arenas in the field of criminal justice. For example, in a study of
juvenile delinquency, Johnson et al. (2000) systematically reviewed the literature assessing the
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relationship between religiosity and juvenile delinquency. Each of the articles included in the
study was coded to note the role assigned to the religion variables. The authors noted that as an
independent variable, religion could be treated in one of three ways: a central explanatory
variable, a peripheral explanatory variable, or a covariate used for statistical control. After
systematically evaluating 40 articles, Johnson et al. (2000) concluded that the findings regarding
the role of religion in explaining delinquency were inconsistent.
An important part of the Johnson et al. study (2000) was the examination of the
dimensionality of religiosity. Johnson et al. (2000) classified religious measures into six
categories. The categories are attendance, salience (importance of God in daily life),
denomination, prayer, Bible study, and religious activities.1 Johnson et al. (2000) noted that
inconsistent findings in previous studies are related to the choice of one or only a few dimensions
of religiosity. They claimed that measuring religiosity in a multidimensional manner provides
richer and more methodologically defensible conclusions. This point is important for a couple of
reasons. One, noting that religiosity is a more complex notion than can be represented with a
single dimension moves the research away from simplistic measures of religiosity, as Johnson et
al. (2000) intended. For example, while extremely religious people would be expected to attend
religious services at a high rate, there are other factors that affect religious attendance, such as
peer pressure. This makes attendance less than ideal as a sole measure of religiosity. Second, the
discussion is pertinent to drawing comparison groups when assessing the effects of religious
programs. For example, prior research has often suggested that those most involved in religious
programs are less likely to recidivate. However, to draw a meaningful comparison group, we
need to know who in the comparison group would have participated most fully had they been
1
Since the current study is an examination of a multi-faith program, we refer to Bible study as sacred writings or
sacred texts.
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involved in the program. Other dimensions of religiosity probably are helpful in identifying
comparison group members in these situations.
Sumter and Clear (2002) point out that during the 20th century many scholars have
speculated about the impact religion has on prisoners. A much smaller number of scholars have
added to the empirical knowledge about the effects of religion or religious programming. Several
points stand out. First, there are very few studies that have examined the effectiveness of
religious correctional programming. Second, of the studies that have examined the issue,
inconsistencies in the findings of the studies suggest that religion operates in a multidimensional
manner. Finally, consistent evidence exists that religious programming may play a role in
reducing recidivism of offenders who take advantage of those programs (Sumter & Clear, 2002).
Not noted by Sumter and Clear (2002), though, is another critical shortcoming of all of the
previous studies, and that shortcoming is the focus of this paper.
Generally missing from analyses of the effects of faith-based programming upon
recidivism is an empirical examination of the types of inmates who volunteer for treatment.
While researchers have examined and discussed the types of inmates attracted to faith programs
(Johnson, 2004; Johnson et al., 1997; O’Connor, 2004, 2004-2005), these informal examinations
have not gone to the next step of predicting the types of inmates who volunteer for treatment.
The failure to proceed to the next step is important for two reasons. First, an understanding of the
types of inmates who are most likely to take advantage of voluntary faith-based programs would
help policymakers and program providers plan for the provision of these services. Second, the
issue of who volunteers for treatment is crucial for evaluating whether inmates benefit from
faith-based programs. Like evaluations of many prison programs, evaluations of faith-based
programs have to contend with the fact that program participation is voluntary. As such, inmates
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who volunteer for treatment are by definition different from inmates who do not volunteer for
treatment. Often, these differences are not understood, and it is even less likely that the
differences are measured. Without an understanding and ability to control for self-selection, an
unknown amount of bias is introduced into studies comparing outcomes between faith-based
program volunteers and inmates who did not volunteer for treatment. The bias, generally known
as selection bias, threatens both the internal and external validity of the findings from a study
(Berk, 1983).
An example from the existing evaluation literature of religious programs underscores
why the issue of selection bias is important. Johnson and Larson (2003) provided an evaluation
of the InnerFaith Freedom Initiative (IFI) operated by Prison Fellowship for the state of Texas.
The authors planned to base the study on a rigorous evaluation methodology, e.g., random
assignment of volunteers to either receive the program or not. However, due to an insufficient
number of volunteers, the research design was subverted by the practical realities of the need to
place almost all volunteers into the program. The authors then had to fall back to a quasiexperimental design where they derived a comparison group of inmates who matched the
program participants in key ways, such as socio-demographics and type of offense. However, the
authors were not able to match the inmates on some very important dimension, such as
motivation to change or degree of religiosity before entering the program. As such, it was not
possible to know exactly how comparable the comparison and participant groups were in reality.
When Johnson and Larson (2003) reported the results that compared all comparisons with all
inmates who entered the IFI, they reported that there was no statistically significant difference in
the recidivism rate for released inmates who participated in IFI. However, they did report that
inmates who completed IFI were less likely to recidivate than the comparison inmates. However,
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this comparison was based upon even less knowledge about the comparability of the group of
completers and the group of all comparison subjects. To be statistically appropriate, the
comparison should have been between program completers and comparison subjects who would
have completed the program. However, Johnson and Larson (2003) had no empirical method to
subset the comparison group in this manner, so they relied upon a comparison that is simply not
statistically defensible.
The literature on religion in prison and subsequent recidivism has four consistent themes.
First, religious programs in prisons have been around from the beginning of modern prisons,
especially in the United States, and they remain an important source of programs in modern
prisons. Second, despite the rich history and importance of religious programs, very few studies
have attempted to formally document the effects of religion upon recidivism. Third, the
measurement properties of religiosity are given short attention, even in studies specifically
designed to assess the effect of religion. Usually, onl…
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