I just came across the following news wire report: “The federal government, [after] a painstaking three years of intensive [study], admitted that the prisons of the United States stand as ‘sordid reminders of failure’ as forces in the rehabilitation of criminals.”

This admission by the government comes in a 1,700-page report that states that except for temporarily warehousing dangerous criminals, our prisons serve little purpose. The report notes, “Many men are being sent to prison only to come out worse social misfits than when they entered.”

Well, this shouldn’t be news to you. After all, this government study was released in 1939! It could have been written yesterday. I came across the article in an old, yellowed copy of the South Bend, Indiana, Tribune, dated March 26, 1939.

So, sixty-seven years later, what has changed? Practically nothing.

In fact, just two months ago, the blue-ribbon Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons echoed this decades-old report. The commission concluded that not only are our prisons ineffective, they actually endanger public safety! The violence bred inside our nation’s prisons makes our communities less safe.

The problem is that the government alone can do little to improve the situation in our prisons. First of all, as the commission rightly notes, governments don’t have the resources to fully fund the kinds of “highly structured programs that are proven to reduce misconduct in correctional facilities and to lower recidivism rates after release.” In fact, states are cutting funding for such programs. Secondly, to address the root cause of crime—wrong moral choices made by criminals—we have to work for the spiritual and moral transformation of criminals. No government program is suited to do that.

That’s why faith-based organizations, working with the government, are key to literally changing the face of our prisons and enhancing public safety. Take the InnerChange Freedom Initiative­™, or IFI, an intensive pre-release program in five states that provides educational and rehabilitative programming in the context of spiritual and moral transformation. Prisoner participants are surrounded by volunteer Christians who mentor them in prison and walk beside them after release.

The results? Well, in Texas only 8 percent of IFI graduates were reincarcerated within two years of their release, compared with 20 percent of a control group of other Texas prisoners. And ask any state employee about the conditions of an IFI unit compared to normal prison settings: IFI units are safer, cleaner, and prisoner morale is unmistakably higher.

Sadly enough, as you already know from our comments on “BreakPoint,” a federal judge recently ruled that the IFI program in Iowa violates the separation of church and state. Well, Prison Fellowship, IFI, and the state of Iowa have appealed that ruling and hope to have it overturned.

In the meantime, let’s not wait another sixty-seven years for yet another government report to tell us that our prisons are not working. We know what works: faith-based programs working hand-in-hand with correctional agencies.