http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2115Bill Berkowitz: America's First All-Christian Prison May Be Coming Down the Pike
If Bill Robinson gets his way, Wakita, Oklahoma, a small town near the Kansas border consisting of 380 residents, will be the home of the first all-Christian prison in the U.S. Robinson, who runs a Dallas-based outfit called Corrections Concepts Inc. (CCI), hopes to have the facility up and running within 16 months.
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OneNewsNow, a news service of Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, recently reported that while there are a number of prisons with "Christian or faith-based units," no prisons have "an all-Christian staff." "All of the employees will be Christians," Robinson said. "We have an opinion letter from the
that says we can do that." Christian guards and staffers would supervise volunteering inmates.
The news service pointed out that "The facility would house only prisoners who want to transfer there. They will not be required to go to church or Bible study, but will be required to sign an agreement to participate in some prison programs. Inmates will be offered classes in literacy, GED requirements, and life skills."
"It's a faith-based, work ethic, corrections initiative where we take men in their last 12 to 24 to 30 months before their earliest release, and they have to volunteer to come, which makes us constitutional," said Robinson, an ex-con and prison minister.
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(Texas Prison Bid'ness was launched in March 2007 to provide information "about the growing prison-for-profit industry in Texas." The blog's name "is a tribute to Texas writer Molly Ivins, who wrote in 2003, 'What happens if you privatize prisons is that you have a large industry with a vested interest in building ever-more prisons.'"
According to the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) Violations Web site, CCI doesn't intend to "abide by the PIECP mandatory requirements of paying inmate workers in the program prevailing wages -- instead choosing to pay them federal minimum wages -- for their labor."
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PIECP-Violations suggested that Wakita residents "should review the PIECP Guidelines and ask pointed and specific questions of Corrections Concepts, Inc. about the proposed Prison Industry they plan on opening at the prison complex." Questions should be raised about whether the facility "will result in the loss of private sector jobs or unfairly compete with local Oklahoma Private Sector manufacturers of similar products. This must be done to protect Oklahoma jobs from disappearing behind the prison fences."
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