Pubdate: Fri, 02 Feb 2001
Source: Alameda Times-Star (CA)
Copyright: 2001 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact:  P.O. Box 28884 ,Oakland, CA 94612
Fax: (510) 208-6477
Website: http://www.timesstar.com/
Author: David Cole
Note: David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, is legal 
affairs correspondent for The Nation and author of "No Equal Justice."

FAITH TRIUMPHS OVER PRISON IN TREATMENT AND REHABILITATION

THIS week President Bush began work toward a central goal of his 
"compassionate conservative" domestic program: the support of faith-based 
social services. Liberals have already sounded the alarm about weakening of 
the wall between church and state.

But as a card-carrying liberal, I suggest that we should not be so quick to 
attack. Faith-based social services are social services, after all. They 
include drug and alcohol treatment centers, prison programs and 
community-based help for young people -- just the sort of responses to 
crime and the conditions contributing to it that liberals prefer.

Whatever else one might say about them, religious institutions cannot lock 
people up. Faith-based programs emphasize treatment, education, 
rehabilitation and reintegration into society, rather than incarceration.

Because redemption plays a central role in many faith-based programs, 
Bush's initiative offers hope that rehabilitation may be restored as a 
politically acceptable response to crime.

Since the early 1970s, we have all but given up on rehabilitation as "soft 
on crime." That trend has in turn contributed to unprecedented increases in 
the length of criminal sentences and the number of inmates. Our per capita 
incarceration rate has increased by 500 percent since the early 1970s, and 
at 700 for every 100,000 residents it is now highest in the world and five 
times higher than that of the next highest Western nation. And in the 
absence of rehabilitation, recidivism runs high.

Many of the most effective faith-based programs begin in prisons, leading 
inmates away from crime by turning them to faith. And in many prisons, the 
only groups engaged in rehabilitative programs are religious ones, like the 
Nation of Islam and Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship.

While the evidence is still sketchy, there is reason to believe that 
faith-based responses to crime may be effective in a measurable way -- 
especially when they address the drug and alcohol dependency at the root of 
much criminal behavior.

Witness the success of Alcoholics Anonymous, which insists upon the 
recognition of a "higher power" as a critical step to recovery. Or consider 
Teen Challenge, a drug treatment program that reports much better success 
rates than many secular programs do.

Concerns about maintaining the separation of church and state are certainly 
valid. Where the government finances programs that simultaneously treat a 
social problem and indoctrinate religion, legitimate objections can be 
raised under the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. But liberals' 
concerns about this are often overstated.

The Constitution does not require strict separation of church and state, 
because in a modern society in which virtually everyone benefits from some 
form of government support, that would amount to discrimination against 
religion. Churches, mosques and synagogues may constitutionally receive 
government aid in the form of tax exemptions and fire and police 
protection, and parochial schools may receive government-financed 
computers, textbooks and remedial education.

And where government aid is directed toward private citizens, like those 
who qualify under Medicaid for treatment of alcoholism, the Establishment 
Clause generally does not prevent the individual from using that aid in a 
church-run program. Where the choice of service is truly private and the 
governmental purpose is secular, government help does not endorse religion.

Care must undoubtedly be taken to honor the Establishment Clause, but those 
concerns should not blind us to the potential benefits that faith-based 
social service programs offer.

President Bill Clinton's legacy with respect to the crime problem included 
the enactment of more than 50 new federal death penalties and the largest 
increase in the prison population in American history. We liberals should 
be glad that Bush is starting off on a different foot.

David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, is legal affairs 
correspondent for The Nation and author of "No Equal Justice."
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