The premise of the Faith-Based Approaches to Crime Prevention and Justice Committee is that organized religion has a necessary and effective role to play in the reformation of criminal conduct on the part of Wisconsin's prison population, including those convicted of crime and those under probationary or parole supervision.

     This premise is false.  Most of the prison population is affiliated with an organized religion or comes from a "faith-based" home and family background.  Indeed, the news often cites pastors, ministers, priests, and religious laypeople who are charged and convicted of criminal conduct.  Therefore faith and religious indoctrination are uncertain guarantors of good conduct.

     Faith is the world's worst method of arriving at decisions. In theory, it CAN be used to justify anything.  In practice, it actually GETS used only when a person wishes to rationalize a previously arrived-at conclusion which is unsupported by reason or evidence. In America, the law relies on reason, and properly so.  Faith is used to arrive at beliefs totally contradicted by reason and should not be used as the basis for public policy.

     It is argued by religious advocates and their political supplicants that the Special Legislative Committee is merely engaged in study to determine if "faith-based" delivery systems can be effective.  AAW notes that the committee is stacked with people predisposed to arrive at just such a conclusion, regardless of what any "study" might show. Besides, even if it could be demonstrated conclusively that such "faith-based" methods are highly effective, such effectiveness would be irrelevant.  It would make as much sense to set up a study committee to determine if torture is an effective method of eliciting confessions.  Perhaps torture would turn out to be highly effective, but it is just as forbidden in a civilized society as "faith-based" approaches.

     AAW supports both religion clauses of the First Amendment -- not only the "no establishment" clause but also the "free exercise" clause. Therefore AAW holds that any person or organization wanting to provide "faith-based" services to Wisconsin's incarcerated, probationary, or paroled population should be able to do so -- but that those services should be privately funded from the "faith-based" community and not charged to a tax-supported public treasury, thereby involving direct financial support by the government.

     The Faith-Based Approaches to Crime Prevention and Justice Committee should be dissolved as a legislatively supported and financed body. If the "faith-based" community, private charities, or religiously affiliated organizations wish to pursue goals of inculcating religion into the lives of prisoners, parolees, or probationers, they should do so without assistance from any governmental entity.

     The 28 prison chaplain positions currently funded by the State of Wisconsin should be abolished and their role assumed by volunteers from the "faith-based" community without recourse to the public treasury.