The toilets and sinks — white porcelain ones, like at home — were in
a separate bathroom with partitions for privacy. In many Iowa prisons,
metal toilet-and-sink combinations squat beside the bunks, to be used
without privacy, a few feet from cellmates.

The cells in Unit E
had real wooden doors and doorknobs, with locks. More books and
computers were available, and inmates were kept busy with classes,
chores, music practice and discussions. There were occasional movies
and events with live bands and real-world food, like pizza or
sandwiches from Subway. Best of all, there were opportunities to see
loved ones in an environment quieter and more intimate than the typical
visiting rooms.

But the only way an inmate could qualify for this
kinder mutation of prison life was to enter an intensely religious
rehabilitation program and satisfy the evangelical Christians running
it that he was making acceptable spiritual progress. The program —
which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the
support of George W. Bush,
who was governor at the time — says on its Web site that it seeks “to
‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems” and
showing inmates “how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from
their sinful past.”

One Roman Catholic inmate, Michael A. Bauer,
left the program after a year, mostly because he felt the program staff
and volunteers were hostile toward his faith.

“My No. 1 reason
for leaving the program was that I personally felt spiritually
crushed,” he testified at a court hearing last year. “I just didn’t
feel good about where I was and what was going on.”

For Robert W.
Pratt, chief judge of the federal courts in the Southern District of
Iowa, this all added up to an unconstitutional use of taxpayer money
for religious indoctrination, as he ruled in June in a lawsuit challenging the arrangement.

The
Iowa prison program is not unique. Since 2000, courts have cited more
than a dozen programs for having unconstitutionally used taxpayer money
to pay for religious activities or evangelism aimed at prisoners,
recovering addicts, job seekers, teenagers and children.

Nevertheless, the programs are proliferating. For example, the Corrections Corporation of America,
the nation’s largest prison management company, with 65 facilities and
71,000 inmates under its control, is substantially expanding its
religion-based curriculum and now has 22 institutions offering
residential programs similar to the one in Iowa. And the federal Bureau
of Prisons, which runs at least five multifaith programs at its
facilities, is preparing to seek bids for a single-faith prison program
as well.

Government agencies have been repeatedly cited by judges
and government auditors for not doing enough to guard against
taxpayer-financed evangelism. But some constitutional lawyers say new
federal rules may bar the government from imposing any special
requirements for how faith-based programs are audited.

And,
typically, the only penalty imposed when constitutional violations are
detected is the cancellation of future financing — with no requirement
that money improperly used for religious purposes be repaid.

But
in a move that some constitutional lawyers found surprising, Judge
Pratt ordered the prison ministry in the Iowa case to repay more than
$1.5 million in government money, saying the constitutional violations
were serious and clearly foreseeable.

His decision has been appealed by the prison ministry to a federal appeals court and fiercely protested by the attorneys general of nine states
and lawyers for a number of groups advocating greater government
accommodation of religious groups. The ministry’s allies in court
include the Bush administration, which argued that the repayment order could derail its efforts to draw more religious groups into taxpayer-financed programs.

Officials
of the Iowa program said that any anti-Catholic comments made to
inmates did not reflect the program’s philosophy, and are not condoned
by its leadership.

Jay Hein, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,
said the Iowa decision was unfair to the ministry and reflects an
“overreaching” at odds with legal developments that increasingly “show
favor to religion in the public square.”

And while he
acknowledged the need for vigilance, he said he did not think the
constitutional risks outweighed the benefits of inviting
“faith-infused” ministries, like the one in Iowa, to provide
government-financed services to “people of faith who seek to be served
in this ‘full-person’ concept.”