When Religious Groups Do What the Government Won't

[Sanguine]

Are faith-based programs for the poor a problem when there's no secular alternative?.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Inmates in the Little Rock branch of Arkansas Community Correction Center have three options for how to spend their day. They can stay in the prison and do work duty, washing clothes and scrubbing floors. They can get on a work crew outside of prison and do lawn maintenance and highway repair. Or, if they’re lucky, they can get into The Exodus Project, a program that teaches them how to live when they get out according to Christian values.

If they get into Exodus, which only accepts five men each term, they sit in a classroom on the campus of Arkansas Baptist College for four hours a day learning about ethics, recovery, and Jesus. When they get back to prison, they’re given exclusive access to the GED study room, where they can read their workbooks and study the Bible.

Exodus Project participants are often envied by other cellmates, who’ve spent the day working rather than learning, Timothy Duval, a 37-year-old participant, told me.

“When I come back to the unit every day from the Exodus Project, people see that glow, they see that change in me,” he told me, wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit in a meeting room at the Correction Center. “I have guys that are so excited, [asking] 'what did you learn today?' And I'll pull my books out and teach them stuff that I'm learning and they're excited. They just see the change in me and they're wanting the change as well.”

Not everyone can get into the Exodus Project. It depends heavily on volunteers, and resources are limited. Those that apply have to go through a rigorous screening and interview process, and have to be making good progress in drug or alcohol treatment programs. But those that do get in have a good shot at staying out of jail once they get out: In the first year that the Project has been tracking the people it’s worked with, none has gone back to prison. (In Arkansas, 42 percent of offenders return to prison within three years of their release.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/religious-groups-government-arkansas/477366/

The opening premise of the article is what I found particularly interesting.