Inmate sues over religious rights complaint
BOISE – An Idaho inmate serving time for drunken driving has sued the state’s parole director, claiming the board is violating his religious rights.
Glen H. Farnworth filed the handwritten civil rights complaint earlier this month, alleging that executive director Olivia Craven ordered him to complete a therapeutic treatment program such as Alcoholics Anonymous in order to be granted parole.
He entered the program on April 12, but he quit in August because the program required him to recite a serenity prayer, which refers to God and surrendering to God’s will, twice a day. Farnworth was also allegedly required to recite the Lifeline Therapeutic Community philosophy twice a day, which is also based on religion, he said.
Neither of the recitations represents Farnsworth’s own religious belief, he wrote in the lawsuit.
Craven said she had not seen the complaint and could not comment on it.
The Idaho Department of Correction offers secular drug treatment programs, called core programs, that focus on relapse prevention and cognitive self change, department spokeswoman Melinda O’Malley Keckler said. The core programs are used in the departments “Therapeutic Community” program, along with supplemental programs such as AA.
“None of our programs have religious overtones,” O’Malley Keckler said. “Our goal in treatment is sobriety, and one of the most successful programs in the world is the one provided by AA. The core of this 12-step program is recognizing there is a higher power other than ourselves, and the offender can choose that higher power to be anyone or anything he wants.”
No one in the prison system is required to pray, she said. She said offenders could easily choose a lamp or other inanimate object as a higher power if they liked.
The Department of Correction also offers a supplemental program called White Bison, based on traditional Native American religious beliefs. Its first three steps focus on “finding the Creator,” according to the White Bison Web site.
“It recognizes that as individuals we have inner types of strength that can help us through things,” O’Malley Keckler said.
Without parole, Farnworth’s sentence will be completed July 16, 2008, according to Department of Correction records.
The department has made other moves designed to promote faith among offenders. At the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, officials talked earlier this year about plans to turn one section of the prison into a faith-based block, where prisoners may attend Bible study sessions. The program was expected to start next year but has been put on hold, O’Malley Keckler said.