Faith-based Prison Research Articles

God moves in mysterious ways: Faith units and their influence on prison governance in Argentina and Sweden

Faith-based units are prison spaces centred on the performance of religious practices that can nowadays be found in prisons in several countries. These faith-based practices have usually been explored in relation to the effects they have on inmates, but there are few studies that have explored how their presence affects prison life and how they can influence prison governance. This article will compare two different faith-based prison experiences located in two very different social and penitentiary contexts, Argentina and Sweden, in order to explore how the presence of these units affects prison management. To do so, we will analyse semi-structured interviews with 55 individuals conducted in prisons in both countries.

Religion, Psychiatric Symptoms, and Gender Role Conflict Among Incarcerated Black Men.

Extant literature is mixed on the role of religiosity as a protective factor for mental health concerns and the effectiveness of faith-based prison programs on a reduction in recidivism. Religiosity and psychiatric symptoms are associated with gender role conflict, yet little is known about these relationships among Black incarcerated men. Undergirded by gender role conflict theory, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between religiosity, 30-day psychiatric symptoms, and three measures of gender role conflict: emotional restrictiveness, work-family conflict, and affectionate behavior towards men. In a sample of 206 Black men nearing community re-entry, our results indicated strong religious beliefs and psychiatric symptoms were associated with less emotional restrictiveness. Religious influence and psychiatric symptoms were positively associated with perceived work-family conflict. Further, strong religious beliefs moderated the association between psychiatric symptoms and work-family conflict. Implications for faith-based prison support programs as mechanisms for reducing recidivism among Black men are discussed.

How Americans Talk about Separation of Church and State: Moral Frameworks of Justice and Care

ABSTRACT This paper draws on data from 12 focus group discussions of a faith-based prison ministry program to examine how ordinary Americans talk about the separation of church and state. The focus groups – conducted in Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Boston – revealed that program supporters and opponents draw on different moral frameworks, with supporters focusing on a framework of care and opponents focusing on a framework of justice. The findings affirm the centrality of moral concerns in shaping citizen stances on church-state separation and suggest that meaningful political compromise is possible on the issue of government support of faith-based social services.

Religious Beliefs, Religious Contexts, and Perceived Interactions with Ex-Offenders

Religious institutions can provide a means of support and resources for many people, particularly, individuals who have criminal histories, specifically parolees, sex offenders, and insanity acquittees. When these individuals are released into the community, they often face difficulties in acquiring shelter, work, and social support. Out of their own volition or as a result of faith-based prison programs, they might turn to religious institutions for help reintegrating into the community. However, whether congregation members are more or less accepting of these individuals is unaddressed in the current literature. Two studies assess the relationship between religious beliefs, religious contexts, legal attitudes, and perceived social interactions with parolees, sex offenders, and insanity acquittees. Results suggest that religious beliefs, legal attitudes, and religious contexts play an important role in individuals’ perceived interactions with these individuals. Religious contexts, specifically, might facilitate more positive social interactions with parolees. Implications are discussed.

God in Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Prison Ministries in the Age of Mass Incarceration. By Tanya Erzen

God in Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Prison Ministries in the Age of Mass Incarceration. By Tanya Erzen

A Faith-based Prison Unit as a Community of Change

A Faith-based Prison Unit as a Community of Change

An Analysis of a New Zealand Faith-based Prison Unit as a Place of Retreat

An Analysis of a New Zealand Faith-based Prison Unit as a Place of Retreat

“No Possessions but Rages”: Vindication, Salvation, and Early Kentucky Prison Letters

Testimonies of salvation, popular in contemporary faith-based prison programming, have a lengthy history in US prison literature. Yet accounts of private spirituality can as easily frame an epistemic insufficiency of topical avoidance, concealment, and falsification. To illustrate the pitfalls of such narratives the paper historicizes and analyzes the unpublished 1793–94 prison letters of John Shaw, held in a Kentucky jail for seven years on unknown grounds. By claiming a divine mantle in his letters, Shaw avoids confronting himself. While he writes that he has laid his “soul naked” before readers, in fact he does the opposite and obscures himself. This double motion—both to participate in the world and to hide from it—relies on fabulation and a vindication narrative based on Christian faith.

Everything We Know About Faith-Based Prisons

This Article examines everything we know about the effectiveness of faith-based prisons, which is not very much.Most studies cannot be taken seriously because they are tainted by the “self-selection problem.” It is hard to determine the effect of faith-based prison programs because they are voluntary, and volunteers are more likely to be motivated to change and are therefore already less likely to commit infractions or be re-arrested. This problem is the same one that education researchers have struggled with in determining whether private schools are better than public schools.The only credible studies done so far compare participants with non-participants who volunteered for the program but were rejected. Some studies in this category find no effect, but some do find a modest effect. But even those that find an effect are subject to additional critiques: for instance, participants may have benefited from being exposed to treatment resources that non-participants were denied.Thus, based on current research, there is no strong reason to believe that faith-based prisons work. However, there is also no strong reason to believe that they do not work. I conclude with thoughts on how faith-based prison programs might be improved, and offer a strategy that would allow such experimentation to proceed consistent with the Constitution.

Prison Ain’t Hell: An Interview with the Son of Sam—David Berkowitz, and Why State-Funded Faith-Based Prison Rehabilitation Programs Do Not Violate the Establishment Clause

Prison Ain’t Hell: An Interview with the Son of Sam—David Berkowitz, and Why State-Funded Faith-Based Prison Rehabilitation Programs Do Not Violate the Establishment Clause

Conversion and Coercion in American Prisons

PMLA invites members of the association to submit letters, printed and double-spaced, that comment on articles in previous issues or on matters of general scholarly or critical interest. The editor reserves the right to reject or edit Forum contributions and offers the PMLA authors discussed in published letters an opportunity to reply. Submissions of more than one thousand words are not considered. The journal omits titles before persons' names and discourages endnotes and works-cited lists in the Forum. Letters should be addressed to PMLA Forum, Modern Language Association, 26 Broadway, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10004-1789.What obligations does literary scholarship have to its society, culture, and laws? The question arises in Tanya Erzen's “Religious Literacy in the Faith-Based Prison” (123.3 [2008]: 659–64). The problems with this account of Florida's Lawtey Correctional Institution and its religious-right rehabilitation program begin with the essay's title. One would take “religious literacy” to mean something like “competence in religious history and/or religious doctrine,” but in this essay it does not: for here “religious literacy” is a euphemism for total immersion in and complete acceptance of the Southern Baptist belief system. The author calls such brainwashing “religious self-knowledge” (660), though it seems aimed at the obliteration of any vestiges of selfhood. Even the phrase “faith-based prison” is a smokescreen: “faith,” a term that in our highly religious and religiously diverse culture has generally positive associations, here conceals the ugly truth that the only faith that counts at Lawtey is fundamentalist Christianity.

Religious Literacy in the Faith-Based Prison

At lawtey correctional institution in florida, a group of around two hundred men gather in the prison chapel. They watch raptly as the Christian-based drama group, His Majesty's Productions, performs One Thing. The stage is set to look like the prison yard, where three groups of men banter with one another. As one group begins talking, the other two freeze into tableaus. In the first exchange, the character Buster says to Jim that when he gets out, he's never coming back. “Yeah, how do you know that?” Jim asks skeptically.

Participation in Operation Starting Line, Experience of Negative Emotions, and Incidence of Negative Behavior

The prison industry in the United States has experienced an unprecedented period of growth during the past three decades. Growing dissatisfaction with the monetary investment in the criminal justice system, state-level budget constraints, and high recidivism rates have led many criminal justice professionals to rethink issues of offender resocialization and rehabilitation. Faith-based prison programs are increasingly being used as inexpensive methods for potentially improving the institutional behavior of inmates and reducing their likelihood of postrelease arrest. Unfortunately, however, there is little systematic research on this issue. Using data from Mississippi's largest state prison, the authors explore the relationship between participation in the faith-based prison event, Operation Starting Line, and subsequent experience of negative emotions and incidence of negative behaviors. Descriptive results suggest modest, yet positive, effects of attendance at the event. The article concludes with comments about the potential efficacy of faith-based prison programs and suggestions for future research.

Charitable Choice and Prison Ministries: Constitutional and Institutional Challenges to Rehabilitating the American Penal System

The influence of faith-based prison ministries in the American criminal justice system is examined in the context of the Bush Administration’s efforts to subsidize the social service activities of religious organizations. Studies on the efficacy of prison ministries in rehabilitation are inconclusive; however, some evidence suggests that these programs may be effective in reducing rates of recidivism and improving prison behavior and inmates’ adjustment to life after incarceration. Preliminary reports have prompted politicians, social scientists, and religious leaders to recommend subsidization of prison ministries. Yet government funding in advance of more detailed analysis of effectiveness jeopardizes the voluntary spirit that invigorates such efforts and that may be a key to their success. Public funding also risks the entanglement of state and religious institutions, incentivizes faith groups to jettison doctrines or practices that impede the procurement of funds, and breaks down barriers established by the First Amendment to keep government out of American religious life.