Program shackled

Iowa judge orders Prison Fellowship to end successful program | Edward E. Plowman

It doesn't matter that Prison Fellowship's InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) has had remarkable success at turning around criminals and returning them more stable and productive to their families and society. It's a religious-oriented program that is partly funded with government money, and that makes it unconstitutional and unlawful.

That was the upshot of a 140-page decision issued this month by U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt in Iowa. He ordered IFI to shut down its 6-year-old program serving 210 inmates at a prison in Newton, Iowa, within 60 days and return the $1.5 million it received in government contracts.

Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson and president Mark Early, a former Virginia attorney general, say they will appeal to the 8th Circuit and, if necessary, to the U.S. Supreme Court. IFI can keep working during the appeal process.

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