Prison built around Scientology-based principles draws fire

Last November, in a cedar sauna cranked up to 160 degrees, a crowd of sweaty men read books and chatted amid mariachi music. They emerged to nibble from a tray of raw vegetables or take shots of olive oil.

This is not a spa. This is Second Chance, one of the country’s most unusual alternatives to the nation’s prison systems. Founded by a Scientologist and former real-estate developer — and funded partly by federal tax dollars — Second Chance is a treatment program for nonviolent prisoners with substance-abuse problems.

It is based on principles of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Scientology religion, who argued that toxins from drugs and pesticides accumulate in the body’s fatty tissues, making it difficult for addicts to kick their habit. Saunas and vitamins are intended to purge these residues. Facing few options for successful long-term ways to treat criminal defendants with serious drug problems, 24 of New Mexico’s 84 district judges have sentenced more than 50 prisoners to terms at Second Chance.

Even before it opened its doors to inmates last September, Second Chance and its unconventional methods had ignited a controversy in New Mexico’s legal community. At the center of the debate are two former friends and sometime adversaries. William Lang, chief district judge in the area that includes Albuquerque, doesn’t want his colleagues to sentence inmates to Second Chance. On the other side is Judge Lang’s predecessor, W. John Brennan, who was hired by Second Chance to convince judges to do just that. […]

Judge Lang says he is “highly suspicious” of the program. “If it is connected to Scientology, just say so,” he says. Second Chance officials and a spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology say there are no ties. […]

Judge Lang, who attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, says personal grudges have nothing to do with his skepticism about Second Chance. Judge Lang says he believes funding for treatment should go to existing programs that have a track record. […]

Second Chance is the brainchild of Rick Pendery, a former real-estate developer who says he has spent decades studying world religions with a focus on the writings of Mr. Hubbard.

In 1995 Mr. Pendery opened the first Second Chance program in Ensenada, Mexico, using his own money and funds from the Mexican government. His first attempts to open a program in the U.S. failed.

Then in 2002, Mr. Pendery gave a presentation on Second Chance to a conference of women legislators in San Diego and took about 60 of them to Ensenada. Anna Crook, a Republican state legislator from New Mexico, came away impressed, she says.

Ms. Crook asked New Mexico’s Department of Corrections to work with Second Chance to establish a pilot project. The department declined because Second Chance isn’t a “good fit,” according to a spokeswoman. Undeterred, Ms. Crook says she then went to Washington and secured $350,000 for Second Chance from the 2004 appropriations bill.

With federal funds approved, Mr. Pendery says the “overwhelming majority” of the remaining $300,000 needed to start Second Chance came from businessman Randall Suggs, a Scientologist who owns a stake in the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. The state of New Mexico later allocated $300,000. Mr. Suggs didn’t return phone calls.

Second Chance’s next challenge was to persuade judges to send addicts convicted of either misdemeanors or felonies to the program. […]

The center received its first inmate in September. Currently, about half of the inmates who are qualified to go to Second Chance ultimately go to the program, Mr. Brennan says.

Still, some judges are balking. “I’m not ordering or sentencing anybody to that program at this time,” said Judge Denise Barela Shepherd at a Nov. 8 hearing where she sentenced a probation violator to prison instead. In an interview, Ms. Shepherd said there isn’t enough evidence for her to conclude the program works.

Mr. Hubbard’s principles have been taken to prisons before. For many years a program called Criminon, also based on Mr. Hubbard’s teachings, has operated drug-intervention programs in jails. But Second Chance represents the first time in the U.S. that an incarceration facility has been designed around Mr. Hubbard’s methods, which involve not just behavioral treatments but saunas and specific diets as well. […]

One drill, called bull-baiting, is designed to help participants learn how to tolerate verbal assaults. Mr. Gutierrez stared into the eyes of another inmate stationed three feet away. As his partner yelled scripted statements at him like “You look like a frog!” Mr. Gutierrez was supposed to remain impassive.

Another drill has inmates sit opposite each other, look each other in the eye and read lines from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. […]

Bill Miller, an addiction expert and a retired professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, reviewed Second Chance at the request of the city of Albuquerque. “There’s a lot of use of sauna with the idea that you sweat out toxins in the system. I don’t know of any scientific basis for that,” he says. “It wasn’t clear to me what sort of scientific basis there was even for the conception of the program to begin with.”

Does it work? “Basically we just don’t know,” he says.

This is a summary extract from the full article as it appeared in the Post-Gazette, Jan 19, 2007

Full Article [Cached]