A Christian organization that provides programs for inmates is asking the Manitoba government to allow it to create Canada's first faith-based prison unit. This follows the U.S. where there are already several such prisons which claim to have been successful in helping prisoners reform.

Prison Fellowship Canada wants the province to incorporate such a unit into the new women's jail being built near Winnipeg.  Executive director Ellie Clitheroe said the special unit would teach Christian principles and values, similar to aboriginal healing lodges that already exist in several correctional institutions across the country.

Prison Fellowship Canada is part of Prison Fellowship International, an association of more than 100 organizations worldwide.

The Christian programming would be paid in part by her group, Clitheroe said, adding that participation in the program would be voluntary. "We would not require someone to be a professing Christian to enter but we certainly would expect them to be respecting the values and principles that we would be engaged in," she said.

If you look at what Prison Fellowship Canada does, it seems they do Social Work with a Christian slant and are financed primarily by donations.  Although Christians are misguided in their claimed motivation (there is no god who cares what they do), they nevertheless do good work such as in this case.  They are not asking to convert any heathens - they just want to make the prisoners better people.  It's a pity that they will perpetuate misconceptions in prisoners but it's probably unlikely that prisoners will make a rational decision to leave their religion while they are in prison.  It's the sort of place and circumstance where most people would grasp at any straw to make them feel better.  After all, it's the nearest we have to "Hell on Earth" and here there are some people who are saying, "let's make your Hell a bit closer to Heaven"  and "we promise that this life is only a prelude to a better (after-)life".

So I say, let them - it will save some taxpayers money and since there are few atheists in prison compared to religious people, they can look after their own.  Since there seems to be no group of atheist volunteers doing this kind of work does that mean atheists don't care about the "fallen"?  I suspect we have other things to do and care about - did you see the article about Kiva (online giving)  where Atheists were leading in generosity?

Some info from CBC News

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