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Christian program for inmates illegal
WASHINGTON - A federal judge ruled Friday that Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries and the state of Iowa violated the Constitution by setting up a government-funded program to rehabilitate prison inmates by immersing them in Christianity....

..."The overtly religious atmosphere of the InnerChange program is not simply an overlay or secondary effect of the program — it is the program," he wrote. Based on testimony at a two-week trial last fall, he concluded that inmates who voluntarily entered the program received significant benefits, including better living conditions, and that the prison did not offer any alternative secular or non-Christian program.

"Though an inmate could, theoretically, graduate from InnerChange without converting to Christianity, the coercive nature of the program demands obedience to its dogmas and doctrine," the decision said.

The judge ordered Iowa's Department of Corrections to disband the religious program within 60 days, and he directed Prison Fellowship Ministries to pay back at least $1.5 million that it has received from the state since the program began in 1999....