SMALL HOUSE BUILDERS FROM THE BIG HOUSE

Texas convicts build Habitat for Humanity homes under the watchful eyes of correctional officers

The InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) is a Christian rehabilitation program run by Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries. It is designed to help prison inmates who are within 24 to 18 months of their scheduled release. The program was introduced to the Texas prison system at the Carol Vance Unit in Richmond, a small town near Houston. In 1998, InnerChange teamed up with Habitat for Humanity, the charity that builds small homes for the poor.

InnerChange consists of a two-phase prison program. According to IFI:

Phases one and two occur during the prisoner's incarceration; phase one concerns what the program refers to as the inmate's "personal values and thought processes and encourages the development of spiritual and moral filters." The second phase "tests the inmate's value system in real-life settings and prepares him/her for life after prison. Inmates may spend much of the day in off-site prison work programs or involved in the reentry portion of the IFI curriculum."

After release, the prisoner participates in IFI programming for an additional 12 months, with volunteer mentors providing mentoring and support.

According to Wikipedia:

The 15-hour days of the participants are dominated by Christian beliefs. Many Bible study sessions are held. The program considers drug addiction to be a sin instead of a disease. The program tells prisoners that homosexuality, masturbation, and premarital sexual intercourse are sins. In order to graduate from IFI, one has to be employed for six months after he is released, as well as meet with a trained local mentor, and attend a pro-social group.

Some of the IFI participants are released from the Vance Unit to construct Habitat for Humanity houses. They work five hours a day, five days per week and obtain on-site skills training as they work under the watchful eyes of correctional officers. Since 1998, Vance inmates have worked on more than 600 houses. According to IFI, at least 15 of those workers have found paying jobs with Habitat after their release from prison.

The Houston Chronicle reports that “inmates from all over the state apply for admission to the Vance-based program. At present, about 320 prisoners participate in InnerChange, and applications number in the thousands.”

InnerChange executive director Tommie Dorsett claims that about 9.5 percent of IFI graduates are returned to prison. The Texas prison system claims that only 23 percent of its inmates are returned to prison within three years of their release. That claimed recidivism rate is highly suspect since in most states the rate hovers around 40-50 percent.

Whether the recidivism rate for IFI graduates is as low as claimed by Dorsett or double that, it looks like a very good program. But I’m sure liberals do not like IFI because it teaches that homosexuality is a sin.