Christians Attempt to Make Me Straight

This article was brought to my attention via the blog Right Wing Watch. This makes me feel all sorts of weird and scared. On the one hand, this is very much in line with typical Christian evangelizing bullshit, but it is particularly frightening on a number of levels. The article is about attempts to create a "Christian prison." Here's an excerpt:

A 150-acre site on the edge Wakita has been selected, and an agreement has been reached with Corrections Concepts Inc. to manage the 600-bed prison if and when it is built ... [Bill] Robinson said the $42 million project would be financed with bonds.

A bond underwriting company said that if a government jurisdiction will commit to sending 310 inmates at a cost of $42.80 a day, bond sales can begin, and the project can proceed.

...

Robinson, himself an ex-con and prison minister, said he had been working for years on the idea of an all-Christian prison, and he had invested $1.3 million so far on construction plans and other expenses.

He said a lot of prisons have faith-based or Christian units, but he knows of none with an all-Christian staff.

"The staff, being all born-again believers, will see this as a mission," he said.

"I want people to understand what it's about. It's about changing criminals into citizens."

The prison would accept only men near the end of their sentences who volunteer to come into the prison and sign an agreement to participate.

They would work full time at private industries that operate inside the prison, get job training, and earn money.

The money would go to support their families, pay restitution to their victims, contribute to their own room and board, and produce a nest egg they can take when they leave prison.

Classes in literacy, General Educational Development requirements and life skills would be offered, and Wayland University, a Christian college in Plainview, Texas, has agreed to put a satellite campus in the prison.

"They don't have to go to church, or Bible study, but they have to participate in the curriculum, which is Christ-centered," Robinson said.

He possesses legal opinions that say that as a religious organization, the prison will be able to hire only people of like faith, he said.

If constitutional challenges arise, he said, the American Center for Law and Justice, a major Christian law firm, has agreed to represent the ministry for free.

This illustrates one of the many potential pitfalls of privatizing prisons (and things in general), a subject much under discussion lately, particularly in Arizona. It's amazing that things like this seem to be popping up more and more these days. Barack Obama is president people! He's supposed to be a fascist-socialist hybrid who's giving the government control of everything, right? There is a goddamn democratic SUPER MAJORITY in the Senate! Yet the free market continues to be treated as more of a solution than a problem today as in the recent past under He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named's administration. Ugh. Full article:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20091102_18_A1_WAKITA319539&archive=yes