I would also like to know what kind of counselling and support, and what kinds of training programs, these prisoners get. If people get professional attention when distressed, they often do better than people who are left to the tender mercies of their peers.

I attended a private high school. We had a very low rate of misbehavior, a high rate of college acceptance, and almost no drop-outs. We had an entrance exam and expulsion instead. So does this place. Of course they have fewer behavior problems. They have a preselected population screened to succeed.

My private school was Catholic. 12 years of Catholic education wasn't enough to make me a Catholic. But I also had ambition, and that was the reason I enrolled there. I was motivated by self-interest, not by love of religion. I daresay that those in the prison program who succeed are similarly motivated.

The problem with this program is that it's based on a false premise: religion makes people better. What makes people better is belief: in themselves, in their fellow citizens, in their future. If a prison system can offer safety, education, fellowship and counselling, it fulfills basic human needs that will support this belief in the participants. Religion is not the deciding factor.

Prisons are government-run organizations to which people are compelled to go as part of our law-enforcement system. If Florida is going to offer a "faith-based" alternative, they had better make very certain that conditions are the same for every prison, with or without a religious focus. If they don't, they will find themselves challenged in court for discriminating against prisoners based on their religion, or lack thereof.

The question of recidivism, as the fact sheet says, can't be called yet. I wonder if the success rate will be anything near as dreadful as "abstinence-only" sex education, another faith-based initiative, has been.