|
Title: Judge Rules Christian Prison Program Unconstitutional; (Prison Fellowship: found Post by: Soldier4Christ on September 03, 2006, 03:35:34 PM Judge Rules Christian Prison Program Unconstitutional; (Prison Fellowship: founder Chuck Colson)
The Iowa district judge who ruled against the Prison Fellowship program is Robert Pratt, who was appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton in 1997. In 2002, Judge Pratt struck down an Iowa law that required convicted sex offenders to live at least 2,000 feet from schools, day care centers and other child care facilities. Judge Pratt is a member of the Volunteer Committee of Lawyers, an affiliation who's members 'share strong misgivings about the wisdom and consequences of America's perpetual drug war'. On an article on the VCL site, Judge Pratt refers to the war on drugs as the "war on drugs" and laments the taxpayer dollars wasted by the fight. No matter Judge Pratt's noble intentions, how effective would decriminalization be if he and the ACLU were successful at removing from prisons a voluntary program which so many ex-convicts credit with their own rehabilitation? Perhaps the answer is that, lacking an effective and proven alternative to programs such as those run by IFI / Prison Fellowship, decriminalization itself would be considered by some to be the acceptable secular alternative. |