INNERCHANGE: If you were a prisoner, would you like a key to your cell, a private bathroom, free phone calls (a huge deal in prison, as you might imagine), the right to live in an “honor” wing, and access to a big-screen TV? You could get this stuff–in Iowa’s Newton Correctional Facility. But you’d also have to “immerse” yourself in Bible study and live “under the guidance of Christian staff.” Because the only program that comes with those perks is Prison Fellowship’s Innerchange.

That’s why Eugene Volokh and others think Innerchange as practiced at Newton is unconstitutional. As far as I can tell, that’s right–because the perks go above and beyond what is necessary for the program to function, and so the impression is given that the state is promoting Christianity rather than simply allowing a Christian program to operate in the prisons. Innerchange usually tries to be pretty careful about this stuff; for example, they point out that prisoners do not receive reduced sentences for participation in Innerchange. (In other words, participation in the program is not considered evidence that the prisoner has reformed or is in any other respect especially eligible for parole.) But in this case, it sounds like Innerchange made a big mistake–or overenthusiastic prison officials did.

But. I’m a huge fan of Innerchange; I think it offers hope to people whom many of us have simply given up on. So I’d strongly urge everyone to be careful, when looking at this case, not to conclude that anything that makes a religious group attractive to prisoners also automatically makes it suspect or constitutes improper religious pressure by the state. A lot of aspects of Innerchange are both attractive to non-Christian prisoners and intrinsic to the program: the program’s ban on cussing, its connection with Habitat for Humanity, and the less hostile atmosphere it provides, for example. Those aspects likely help explain why at least two Muslim prisoners have completed the program (and praise it highly). To shut down the one program that offers these features because no non-Christian organization operates under the same guidelines strikes me as deeply harmful, even perverse. It’s like banning the prison choir because no local non-Christian choral group has stepped up to take the non-Christian prisoners who like to sing. Or banning Christian prison-visiting groups because there’s no local secular visiting group.

In a majority-Christian country, and especially given Christianity’s strong emphasis on visiting prisoners (it’s one of the Corporal Works of Mercy), it is pretty much inevitable that there will be more Christian programs than non-Christian programs available to prisoners. Innerchange has offered its program and guidance to non-Christian groups that want to set up a roughly equivalent group, but so far it has had no takers. I don’t think the First Amendment must or should be construed to ban any Christian prison programs that don’t have non-Christian equivalents, or to ban any Christian programs that have features a non-Christian prisoner might like.