Minnesota Ends Funding Of Faith-Based Pre-Release Program

The Minnesota Department of Corrections is ending its $100,000 per year subsidy to the faith-based InnerChange prisoner pre-release program. Today's St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that the policy change was motivated by budgetary, rather than church-state, concerns. Department of Corrections Commissioner Joan Fabian said that after the state had negotiated its second 2-year contract with the group, she found out that InnerChange was operating in Texas prisons without charge. Apparently one of InnerChange's board members has told Fabian that it would operate free of charge in Minnesota as well. Iowa's InnerChange program was struck down by a federal district court, and the appeal of that decision is to be argued next week in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. However Minnesota contends that its program is sufficiently different that it would survive constitutional challenge.