"Innerchange": Conversion As the Price of Freedom and Comfort - a Cautionary Tale About the Pitfalls of Faith-Based Prison Units‪.‬

In the State of Iowa's prison system, enrolling in a program called "The InnerChange Freedom Initiative" could bring an inmate many benefits. Inmates, for example, drew closer to parole because treatment credits they needed for release were more easily available through the program. (1) Entering the program also allowed inmates to move into what many Iowa prisoners considered the most desirable living unit in the state's most desirable prison. (2) And the program's inmates received greater contact with their family members, guarantees of jobs in the prison, increased access to computers and training on how to use them, and various other perks. (3) There was only one catch: InnerChange was an intensive, day-and-night religious program that indoctrinated inmates into one particular version of Christianity. (4) Inmates who did not subscribe to the program's religious teachings faced discrimination and pressure to convert. (5) Roman Catholic inmates, for example, were told that many of their beliefs were wrong. (6) Indeed, one Catholic inmate reported that a program counselor prayed in front of the inmate that Jesus lead the inmate away from Catholicism so that he would not burn in Hell. (7) Likewise, InnerChange's counselors told a Native American inmate that his religion's sweat lodge rituals were a form of witchcraft and sorcery, and they repeatedly asked him whether he had been saved, believed in Jesus, and had become a Christian. (8)