‘We Serve Forgotten Men’: Structural Charity v. Religious Freedom in Serving Ex-offenders

• In Event: The Penal Voluntary Sector: Thematic Panel B

Abstract

Despite widespread reliance by correctional officials in the United States upon faith-based programs for delivering “cost-effective” services to prisoners and ex-offenders, religious volunteers often find themselves unwelcome participants in correctional programming. As a result of an emphasis on lowering costs, legislation for faith-based programming in several states has explicitly identified the fiscal and human capital resources made available from religious volunteer organizations as a proxy resource for strategic reductions in correctional spending. This paper offers a case study of a “religious freedom” lawsuit filed against a volunteer faith-based correctional services provider in Jacksonville, Florida. While the religious volunteers won the lawsuit against them, their experience is instructive regarding the structural contradictions of late-modern American corrections​.

Authors

• Michael Hallett, University of North Florida

• Megan Bookstaver, University of North Florida