Bush, a devout Catholic, told the inmates.

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/story.asp?ID=4280

Against a backdrop of "Amen!"s and clapping hands, and a three-piece
band playing an upbeat number, the 12-member choir starts in, shaking
tambourines and swaying back and forth as they sing: "Jesus/ Mighty God/
Mighty God in heaven/ Every moment let's call out your name/ I will
worship you all my life ..."

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/story.asp?ID=4280

Against a backdrop of "Amen!"s and clapping hands, and a three-piece
band playing an upbeat number, the 12-member choir starts in, shaking
tambourines and swaying back and forth as they sing: "Jesus/ Mighty God/
Mighty God in heaven/ Every moment let's call out your name/ I will
worship you all my life ..."

...
But this is no middle-class, suburban church with parents bringing their
kids to learn the Ten Commandments, sing hymns and kill time before the
football game begins. This is a prison run by the state of Florida.

The revival hall is the gymnasium of the Lawtey Correctional Institute,
a medium-security prison halfway between Gainesville and Jacksonville.
In Decem-ber, Gov. Jeb Bush dedicated Lawtey as the first "faith-based,"
government-run prison in the country. "I can't think of a better place
to reflect on the love of our Lord Jesus than to be here at Lawtey
Correctional," Bush, a devout Catholic, told the inmates. Bush added
that he and his brother, President George W. Bush, agree that the best
way to rehabilitate prisoners is to "lead them to God."

The prison isn't officially about worshipping Jesus, or pushing Jesus on
a captive audience. That would violate the separation of church and
state. Lawtey employs a nonspecific sense of faith and spirituality in
an effort to lower the state's 38 percent recidivism rate.

The American Civil Liberties Union has threatened a lawsuit, saying the
prison blatantly violates church-state separation. State officials
defend Lawtey's constitutionality by pointing out that volunteers, not
taxpayers, provide religious materials and instruction, and that
prisoners aren't forced to attend services that offend them.

...
But it's not that simple. Questions of constitutionality aside -- and
there are plenty -- the reality is social conservatives need Lawtey to
work. They're desperate to claim success in the ongoing battle to
convince people that marrying government programs to religious groups is
a good idea. Artificially or not, the state has set Lawtey up to
succeed, which is important to remember when Gov. Bush begins praising
its success.

...
Stacking the deck

While the image of hardened criminals turning their lives around with a
dose of faith may appeal to the public, the fact is that the Florida
Department of Corrections is doing a bit of cherry-picking. Lawtey has
never been a place for the hard-core and dangerous; instead, its
population is considered safe enough that members routinely work in the
community. In fact, it opened in 1973 as a work-release center, and
became a real prison four years later. Most inmates here have
convictions for offenses like burglary and drug possession.

"If they're troublemakers, they don't send them here," says senior
chaplain William Wright.

Newcomers, in fact, are required not to have any disciplinary reviews --
called DRs -- for misbehavior for three months before they transfer
here; most have been clean for longer than that. Even one DR can send
you packing; already "three or four" inmates have been booted out, White
says.

The fact that these are model prisoners who are less likely to re-offend
is important to keep in mind when the state releases data on this
experiment.

...
"It's all *****. It's all Christian. They don't respect religions. If
you're not a Christian, you go sit in the library while they hollerin'
'Jesus!' Don't let them whitewash you."

So says Michael E. Wynn, an inmate from Orlando here on
cocaine-possession charges.

...
Wynn calls himself a "Hebrew Rastafarian," a faith not found in the
DOC's list of faith groups. He says he was in the faith-based dorm
before the prison converted, but got kicked out. "I wasn't a Christian.
I wasn't doing my devotions," he explains.

He's at least partially right. At the community meeting we attend later
that night, three Muslim inmates are siphoned off into an adjacent room,
while the Christians sing along to a full band and enjoy the preaching
of an ordained minister. No imam is coming for them tonight, and Wright,
a Baptist, is in charge of leading their spiritual journey.

Before the prison went faith-based, Wynn says, things were more
laid-back. "It got worse for us the way the procedures went. We can't
watch Jerry Springer, we can't watch nothing but news and sports [under
the faith-based rules]."

...
More than a few label the prison "fake-based."

"The only sponsors are Christians," complains Derosa. On that point,
he's right. Three organizations sponsor five of the prison's eight dorms
(three haven't found sponsors yet), and all are Christian.

Even if they don't like the program's Christian elements, most inmates
won't transfer out. They have families nearby, and don't want to risk
being transferred far away and miss out on visitation. A few also tell
me that's exactly what prison officials threatened when they were
looking for volunteers: "They told us to sign [up for the program] or be
shipped to the Panhandle," says Demmetris Edge.

...
Despite the state's portrait of Lawtey as a generically religious,
faith-based (whatever your faith may be) prison -- an odd idea,
considering Lawtey sits squarely in the Bible Belt -- the population is
overwhelmingly Christian. According to DOC records, of the prison's 810
residents, 537 align themselves with protestant or evangelical faiths,
or as Messianic Jews who adhere to Judaism's tenets but believe Jesus
was the Messiah. Of these, Baptists are the largest subgroup, claiming
323 members. Ninety-nine others are Roman Catholic.

Tellingly, the largest non-Christian category is "none," with 89.
"Unknown" has 18. There are also 18 Muslims, 11 Jehovah's Witnesses,
three Mormons, two Buddhists, two followers of Native American religions
and one Wiccan.

...
Interestingly, the possibility for a Muslim or Buddhist sponsor to a
mostly Christian dorm is there, though it's doubtful that's the kind of
setup the Bush brothers envision when pushing for faith-based
institutions.

"We want all the dorms sponsored by April 1," says White, the warden.
"We don't care who [sponsors them]. They could be non-religious."

Fact is, the prison can't discriminate. So if you're a Muslim (or a
Buddhist, or a Scientologist, or a Wiccan for that matter) with some
volunteers and the resources to provide life-skills training, you could
throw a wrench into Gov. Bush's plan for a Jesus-centered jailhouse
utopia.

...
The day Bush's faith-based prison hit the papers, the American Civil
Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State
both threatened a lawsuit. Later, Americans United for Separation of
Church and State placed a public information request asking for all
documents related to Lawtey, another step toward legal action.

But before any lawsuit is filed, civil libertarians are watching a test
case in Iowa, in which Watergate-conspirator-turned-prison-minister
Charles Colson's Inner Change program receives state dollars to teach
fundamentalist Christianity to prison inmates. There are some
differences: Colson's program is only open to fundamentalist Christians,
while Lawtey allows in at least some members of different religions;
Inner Change will kick you out of the prison if you don't participate in
the religious activities, whereas Lawtey won't.

But both also share some constitutional problems. As White and McCoy
point out, the volunteers at Lawtey provide services inmates in other
prisons don't have, which could be problematic.

"Doesn't it seem unfair that a prisoner in a non-faith-based prison
can't get that level of service?" asks Americans United spokesman Robert
Boston. "We wonder why those guys [in other prisons] can't make it."

From a legal standpoint, if the state is providing or denying services
on the basis of one's participation (or lack thereof) in a religious
program, that might not fly.

...
There are plenty of gray areas any time church and state are (however
loosely) married, and Lawtey is no exception. In theory, the prison
treats all religions equally, but in practice, it doesn't really work
out that way.
...

---
Merlyn LeRoy