With 13-week classes in parenting and self image, NewLife Behavior Ministries offers more to inmates than a worship service.

NewLife Behavior is one of several faith-based programs that seek to help prison inmates deal with such issues as family problems, self-esteem or substance abuse recovery.

Leo Brown, chaplain and volunteer coordinator for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said programs such as NewLife Behavior, Prison Fellowship and Celebrate Recovery seek to address parts of prisoners lives “that influence how successful they’re going to be once they get out.”

Such programs could make it less likely for an ex-offender to return to prison. A study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civic Society found that graduates of a Prison Fellowship program were less likely than non-graduates to get arrested again. However, Byron Johnson, who conducted the program, said the study was not definitive.

Kathryn McCollum, chaplain at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center said no studies of faith-based programs have been made in Oklahoma.

“But in other states, faith-based programs have made a difference,” she said. “We have one less victim if we have one less offender.”

McCollum said classes such as NewLife Behavior “get right into the issues the women get into.”

Prison officials review a program’s curriculum before allowing it, she said. “If a group just wants to come in and do a service, we have few guidelines except security.“

A good number of programs have no specific denomination, Brown said. “We may have Baptists doing a program at one prison and Methodists doing the program at another.”

Major nondenominational prison ministries include Prison Fellowship and Celebrate Recovery, he said. Though not linked with any denomination, the programs are Christian programs, he said.

Non-Christian groups have been involved in prison programs, “but not to the same degree,” Brown said. “Some are involved as volunteers in leading programs.”

Brown said a Wiccan group provided a class in parenting at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in Oklahoma City, though it was for women already part of that group.

He said the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has “made a good attempt to help those who may not feel comfortable going to a Christian program.”

The corrections department offers a variety of secular programs such as Thinking for Change, which focuses on recovery through cognitive behavior therapy, he said.

The department also offers Character First, an Oklahoma City-based quality development program that emphasizes practical application of such qualities as self-control, loyalty, endurance and dependability. According to the Character First Web site, the program’s 49 character qualities originally were developed by Bill Gothard, founder of the institute for Basic Life Principles.

Involvement in such programs is strictly voluntary, Brown stressed. No inmate is required to attend the program, and no inmate is supposed to get any privileges, such as getting off work detail, for attending the programs, he said.

Faith-based prison programs have been challenged in other states as possible violation of separation of church and state, especially if state funds were used with the program.

In 2006, an Iowa judge ruled that a Prison Fellowship program “InnerChange Freedom Initiative,” offered at an Iowa prison violated separation of church and state.

Reach Cathy Spaulding at 918-684-2928 or Click Here to Send Email