FAITH TRIUMPHS OVER PRISON IN TREATMENT AND REHABILITATION

THIS week President Bush began work toward a central goal of his
"compassionate conservative" domestic program: the support of faith-based
social services. Liberals have already sounded the alarm about weakening of
the wall between church and state.

But as a card-carrying liberal, I suggest that we should not be so quick to
attack. Faith-based social services are social services, after all. They
include drug and alcohol treatment centers, prison programs and
community-based help for young people -- just the sort of responses to
crime and the conditions contributing to it that liberals prefer.

Whatever else one might say about them, religious institutions cannot lock
people up. Faith-based programs emphasize treatment, education,
rehabilitation and reintegration into society, rather than incarceration.

Because redemption plays a central role in many faith-based programs,
Bush's initiative offers hope that rehabilitation may be restored as a
politically acceptable response to crime.

Since the early 1970s, we have all but given up on rehabilitation as "soft
on crime." That trend has in turn contributed to unprecedented increases in
the length of criminal sentences and the number of inmates. Our per capita
incarceration rate has increased by 500 percent since the early 1970s, and
at 700 for every 100,000 residents it is now highest in the world and five
times higher than that of the next highest Western nation. And in the
absence of rehabilitation, recidivism runs high.

Many of the most effective faith-based programs begin in prisons, leading
inmates away from crime by turning them to faith. And in many prisons, the
only groups engaged in rehabilitative programs are religious ones, like the
Nation of Islam and Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship.

While the evidence is still sketchy, there is reason to believe that
faith-based responses to crime may be effective in a measurable way --
especially when they address the drug and alcohol dependency at the root of
much criminal behavior.

Witness the success of Alcoholics Anonymous, which insists upon the
recognition of a "higher power" as a critical step to recovery. Or consider
Teen Challenge, a drug treatment program that reports much better success
rates than many secular programs do.

Concerns about maintaining the separation of church and state are certainly
valid. Where the government finances programs that simultaneously treat a
social problem and indoctrinate religion, legitimate objections can be
raised under the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. But liberals'
concerns about this are often overstated.

The Constitution does not require strict separation of church and state,
because in a modern society in which virtually everyone benefits from some
form of government support, that would amount to discrimination against
religion. Churches, mosques and synagogues may constitutionally receive
government aid in the form of tax exemptions and fire and police
protection, and parochial schools may receive government-financed
computers, textbooks and remedial education.

And where government aid is directed toward private citizens, like those
who qualify under Medicaid for treatment of alcoholism, the Establishment
Clause generally does not prevent the individual from using that aid in a
church-run program. Where the choice of service is truly private and the
governmental purpose is secular, government help does not endorse religion.

Care must undoubtedly be taken to honor the Establishment Clause, but those
concerns should not blind us to the potential benefits that faith-based
social service programs offer.

President Bill Clinton's legacy with respect to the crime problem included
the enactment of more than 50 new federal death penalties and the largest
increase in the prison population in American history. We liberals should
be glad that Bush is starting off on a different foot.

David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, is legal affairs
correspondent for The Nation and author of "No Equal Justice."