Florida's Department of Corrections (DOC) currently operates the largest state-run faith-based correctional facilities program in the United States. In these facilities, the state sequesters inmates from the larger inmate population and both subsidizes and encourages inmate religiosity as part of its larger efforts to prevent future criminal behavior and to reduce the likelihood of prison recidivism. While almost half of the correctional departments in the United States offer similar faith-based correctional facilities, Florida's are notable for several reasons. First, Florida's DOC led the vanguard in the larger movement to create faith-based correctional facilities, as in 1999 it became the second correctional department (after Texas) to create an in-prison faith-based dormitory. The DOC quickly expanded this program to create a total of sixteen faith-based correctional facilities, where it houses roughly five percent of its inmate population. Florida's faith-based correctional facilities are also notable because DOC administrators repeatedly modified the program to adhere to the constitutional guidelines that regulate partnerships between religion and government. Contrary to popular discourse regarding the relationship between religion and state, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that America does not have a complete separation of church and state. Instead, over the past seventy years, the Supreme Court repeatedly concluded that the government can fund religion under certain circumstances and conditions. The courts often modified and clarified previous rulings, but the central premise has not changed—government can partner with religion. To adhere to these rulings, Florida's DOC repeatedly altered its faith-based correctional facilities. What began as an explicitly Protestant in-prison faith-based dormitory evolved into religiously pluralistic correctional facilities open to members of all religions and to inmates with no religious commitments whatsoever. Roughly sixteen years after the DOC created its first faith-based correctional facility, no one has challenged their constitutionality. Even the facilities' critics tacitly admit that they that appear to adhere to constitutional law. As a result of their due diligence, the administrators of Florida's DOC provided a model for other correctional departments who want to create similar programs. Florida's faith-based correctional facilities are the subject of this dissertation. More specifically, this dissertation explores the various historical factors that convinced the administrators of Florida's DOC that they should create faith-based correctional facilities. To this end, it situates Florida's faith-based correctional facilities within the larger contexts of mass incarceration, the impulse to foster religious pluralism, the trend to empower religious social service providers, and neoliberal economics. This story begins in the wake of the Civil War, when the State of Florida created its first state prison. This prison is important because it solidified government-funded religion as the default form of inmate rehabilitation in Florida's prisons. Almost 150 years later, that has not changed. Quite the contrary, Protestant religiosity permeates Florida's DOC, which is arguably the last branch of government to disestablish itself from religion. The dissertation then identifies relevant developments in the twentieth century that combined to create the problem of mass incarceration, which the proponents of faith-based correctional facilities believe only they can solve. In contrast, this dissertation suggests that a common theology underlies both mass incarceration and faith-based correctional facilities. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / June 30, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references. / Amanda Porterfield, Professor Directing Dissertation; Stephen Tripodi, University Representative; Michael McVicar, Committee Member; Martin Kavka, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_273656 |
| Contributors | Stoddard, Brad (authoraut), Porterfield, Amanda (professor directing dissertation), Tripodi, Stephen J. (university representative), McVicar, Michael J. (committee member), Kavka, Martin (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Religion (degree granting department) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource (355 pages), computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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