I can try. Let me admit at the front end that I too think many of these programs will be held unconstitutional. But maybe I find these questions more difficult than you do.
As for (1) and (3), I don't think Mitchell and Bowen - and their general proscription of programs that involve "explicitly religious content" - is going to be relevant here. You suggest later that this principle would end up invalidating the entire prison chaplain system. That seems right. I think the real question is the one you posed later -- is this a legitimate attempt to accommodate private religious exercise or a way for government to push religion on people?
You think it's the latter, but that isn't absolutely clear to me. In some ways this sounds like an accommodation. Prisoners don't have a general right to meet with outsiders. The government must give them special permission to do so, just like prisoners need a special accommodation to have ordinary religious meetings within prison. Let me narrow the issues and save time by agreeing with you that the government shouldn't be encouraging inmates to become religious, even if its ends are secular. But why is that this program? You condemn this program because it seeks "to facilitate personal transformation," but the verb choice could sound in religious accommodation, rather than promotion. Allowing inmates to work with others for their own personal spiritual growth sounds like a good thing. On a corporeal level, that's how they are going to make ties with local people who can get them jobs, friends, and a community when they leave prison.
On the spiritual level, yes, it's true; some believe religion in prison is rehabilitative only because they believe religion is true, or good, or right. But rejecting that idea shouldn't mean the end of this program. There are other valid reasons to embrace religious freedom in prison (or outside of it) -- what happened to the idea that religious freedom in prison was good because it empowered people to find their own identities and live out their lives the way they want? Cf. O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 368 n.8 (1987) (Brennan, J., dissenting) ("Religion in prison subserves the rehabilitative function by providing an area within which the inmate may reclaim his dignity and reassert his individuality.").
I think there will have to be strict safeguards on these programs -- one of the most obvious is that all denominations must be given equal rights to participate in the program (including those who would reject religion altogether). So the single-faith element is suspicious to me, but even then -- if all religious groups are given the same rights, there may not be a problem. (And, a strictly doctrinal question: I don't understand how this can be parlayed into a Larson v. Valente claim, as the rule seems facially neutral.)
Of course, if Americans United is right about the facts underlying this program, I don't know how it could be defended.
Chris
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 19:09:51 -0400
> Subject: Unconstitutional BOP Religion in Prisons Program
>
> I assume that most all of you will agree that this program is indefensible
> under modern Establishment Clause doctrines. Can anyone offer even a
> colorable argument to the contrary?
>
> http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/04/blatantly-unconstitutional-federal.html
>
> A Blatantly Unconstitutional Federal Religion-in-Prisons Program
>
>
> Marty Lederman
>
>
> The Department of Justice's Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has established "a
> residential multi-faith restorative justice program" entitled Life
> Connections. According to the Department of Justice:
>
> The 18-month program is open to adult volunteer inmates in both male and
> female facilities in five BOP facilities across the country. The mission of
> the program is to reduce recidivism and bring reconciliation to victim,
> community and inmate through personal transformation using the participant's
> faith commitment. Inmates parate explore his faith's way to restoration with
> one's God, family, community, and self. Spiritual guides, brought into the
> facility under contract by BOP, lead small group studies of each faith's
> sacred texts. Participants also are matched with volunteer mentors of their
> faith who visit weekly, and are linked with a faith community at their
> release destination in order to enhance community reiticipate in
> religion-specific and interfaith program components designed to help the
> inmntegration.
>
. . .
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