Judge Robert W. Pratt not only shut down the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, he ordered the non-profit organization to pay back all state funds it had collected for services it provided on behalf of the State of Iowa.

Last month a federal trial judge barred the State of Iowa’s expenditure of funds for contracts with a private organization providing a voluntary prisoner reentry program. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Robert W. Pratt, a Clinton appointee, cited questionable church/state separation reasons for the ruling.  But Judge Pratt’s hostility to the innovative prisoner reform program by the non-profit InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) went even deeper.  He punished the private organization by ordering it to pay back all state funds it had collected for services it provided for the state.  Judge Pratt’s decision is a setback to volunteer prison reform efforts, impairing IFI’s valid contracts with the State and infringing upon the U.S. Constitution.
 
Law and order measures undertaken in the ‘90s took more criminals off the streets and reduced crime rates, but those solutions carried their own problems. First, keeping more prisoners behind bars is very expensive. Also, an increased prison population is correlated with increased recidivism, with the children of prisoners also becoming highly susceptible to a life of crime.

Ten years ago, the State of Iowa, facing inmate overcrowding and budget constraints, entered into agreement with IFI to address those problems. IFI is an Evangelical Christian reentry program for prisoners. Prisoners who volunteered spent the remaining 18 months of their sentence in an intensive regimented program that included classroom instruction, moral counseling and religious worship. The program continues for an additional 12 months of mentoring and support after participants are released on parole. Relying largely upon volunteers, similar programs operate in Arkansas, Kansas, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

A study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania revealed significantly reduced rates of recidivism among graduates of Texas's IFI program. IFI offered Iowa an opportunity to incarcerate prisoners at a fraction of the cost of standard imprisonment, with the prospect of greater returns through a reduced rate of recidivism. Iowa annually entered into renewable contracts with IFI. About 40% of IFI's costs are reimbursed by the State, with the other 60% of costs being provided to IFI through private donation. In addition, IFI annually receives thousands of volunteer hours. IFI has received approximately $1.5 million from the State of Iowa for its services.

Despite cost savings to Iowa through reduced incarceration expenses and the fact that supplemental private funds and volunteer hours provide the strong majority of IFI's operational support, the critics want the IFI program stopped. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU) sued. Judge Pratt sided with AU, holding the program violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

Judge Pratt penned an unusually long opinion, a majority of which describes how the IFI program operates.  Disconcertingly, a significant portion of the opinion characterizes the belief systems of Evangelical Christians.  Whether or not Judge Pratt intended it, those who are unfamiliar with many of the details of IFI's program might actually be impressed by the education, instruction and worship regimen that prisoners in the program follow. Of course, Judge Pratt describes the IFI's transformational model program as a coercive program of "indoctrination." The pejorative use of that term suggests the judge assumes that modern radical secularism instead offers "instruction," and is open-minded to different points of view. In reality, by ordering the IFI program shut down in Iowa, Judge Pratt simply foreclosed the message of persons expressing one point of view. 
 

Judge Pratt admitted that the State of Iowa had acted with a secular purpose in contracting with IFI: to run a functional prison system under budgetary constraints. But he went on to rule that because IFI is "pervasively sectarian," its religious mission cannot be disentangled from the state's secular objectives. 
 

It is certainly arguable that Judge Pratt's ruling cuts against the grain of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the U.S. Supreme Court's decision upholding Ohio's school voucher system. That Ohio voucher system allowed state funds to be directed to private sectarian and non-sectarian schools for the education of children where local schools were failing. But Judge Pratt hints at his own disapproval of the Supreme Court majority's opinion in Zelman. He generally analyzes Zelman through the lens of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's concurring opinion in that case. Judge Pratt makes many other citations to concurring opinions by Justice O'Connor, characterized by her multi-factor balancing tests that offer little predictive value. On that basis, it is none too surprising that Judge Pratt could find the IFI program in violation of the Establishment Clause. 
 

IFI is appealing the decision to the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals. The case could eventually appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.  Justice O'Connor's replacement with Justice Alito could clarify the Supreme Court's hitherto murky Establishment Clause jurisprudence.

But even aside from the Establishment Clause issues, Judge Pratt's is profoundly disturbing in its effects on contract law. Rather than issue a narrow ruling that the IFI program should no longer receive state funds, Judge Pratt ordered the program shut down and IFI to pay the state over $1.5 million it received for performing under its contracts.

IFI rendered services to Iowa pursuant to a series of contracts. That the state entered into such contracts supports the reasonableness of IFI’s actions. IFI reasonably relied upon Iowa carrying out its end of the contract and no laws or court decisions — until Judge Pratt’s ruling — prohibited such contracts.  By his own acknowledgment, Judge Pratt recognized that Iowa contracted with IFI in order to further a legitimate secular purpose of providing training to inmates at a good cost. Also there was absolutely no scintilla of evidence that IFI acted maliciously or with improper purpose. Nonetheless, Judge Pratt claimed that IFI somehow should have known it was taking a risk with its program. He held it was more equitable to force IFI to pay back money for its performance under contracts rather than simply prohibit such contracts in the future.

The IFI decision is questionable in light of Zelman.  More disturbingly, it runs against a foundational constitutional principle that government cannot infringe the obligations of contracts: Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from infringing upon contractual obligations.  But Judge Pratt’s ruling facilitates precisely what states are otherwise forbidden to do.  Until overruled, Judge Pratt’s troublesome ruling effectively leaves other private organizations wondering whether their contracts with government will be honored if they can be summarily wiped out by courts siding with interest groups opposed to such organizations.