The Christian Prison

My posts for the next few days may be spotty, as I'm attending a scholarly conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico (I know, I know--poor me!).

I did see an item posted on one of the far-right news sites. It's here, an article about "the nation's first all-Christian prison" to be built in Wakita, OK. A group called "Corrections Concepts, Inc." under the leadership of Bill Robinson is pulling together private funding to design and construct a 600-bed prison facility to be staffed and operated entirely by Christians. Prisoners who are near the end of their sentence and who would have to volunteer to be transferred there would enroll in various prison programs (e.g., GED, life skills classes, work release). Apparently, prisoners would not have to attend chapel or be themselves Christians, but the curriculum they'd be going through would be "Christ-centered."

According to this article from the Tulsa World, Robinson is himself an ex-convict and is interested mainly in helping reduce recidivism rates. From what I can tell, he has been trying to realize his idea of a Christian prison for some time, having been rebuffed in other towns (see here and here).

Now, I'd like to be for a project that supports helping prisoners. Jesus directs Christians to visit prisoners and to reach out to those who are suffering or oppressed. And US currently leads the world in terms of incarceration rates and numbers of prisoners (that's right--we imprison people at a higher rate than China, Russia, Cuba, Rwanda, etc.)--a predictable effect of so many mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes. Indeed, US prisons are overtaxed, creating something of a crisis. Thus there's no shortage of people who need help.

But the line between "visit/help people in prison" and "run a prison yourself" seems fairly bright to me, and this project crosses it. It's one thing to assist prisoners with educational initiatives to help them succeed on the outside, but it's quite another to operate an institution making profit on prisoners, no matter how altruistic the owners' stated intentions might be.

And the "Christians-only" clause--exactly how would this be enforced? Who defines or determines the Christianity of the staff? If a staff converts to another faith or if the staff's Christianity gets deemed too heterodox--what happens? Robinson insists that he has all the Constitutional questions licked, but I'm just not so sure.

And then there's information from this site: www.piecp-violations.com, which monitors implementation of the federal Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP). PIECP in essence allows the industrial products of prison labor to be bought and sold at rates on part with products from non-prison labor, provided that the prison in question follows some basic guidelines. For instance, PIECP-qualified prisons must pay prisoners in the program at prevailing wages rather than at the federal minimum wage. According to this article on the piecp-violations website (which is not run by the government), Corrections Concepts, Inc., has stated that it does not plan to abide by PIECP guidelines.

As a private prison, of course, it does not have to do so. What this means, however, is A) the products of the prison labor at the Wakita prison will be produced more cheaply and therefore sold more cheaply than those of other private-sector companies, and B) the prisoners will be paid less than they would for doing the same work in the private sector and are not guaranteed the same kind of workplace protections PIECP mandates.

This seems suspicious to me. I would like to think that Mr. Robinson has a rock-solid rationale for wishing to bypass a program designed specifically to prepare exiting prisoners for real-world work environments. But the nagging thought in the back of my head is the fact that prisons in the US are to a large extent for-profit industries. The crisis of so many prisoners is, unfortunately, also a market opportunity.

Is it really the church's place to be an entrepreneur in that market?

I keep thinking about the image that Christianity wants to send to the world. We are to be the face of Christ to the people most in need of seeing that face. Somehow I imagine that face, that love, appearing and unfolding to those in need without truncheons, pepper spray, and razor-wire fences.

What was it Christ said in Matthew? "For I was in prison, and you owned the cell."

More tomorrow--well, more when I can get a chance to post, anyway.

JF