A faith-based, drug and alcohol treatment center called New Beginnings has been proposed for Bradford County by Mr. William Henry McBratney of Troy, PA. According to James Lowenstein of The Daily Review (3/17/06), Mr. McBratney presented his proposal to the Bradford County Criminal Justice Advisory Board on Thursday, March 16, 2006.
  According to the news report, Mr. Bill McBratney would be the director of New Beginnings and the board of directors would include among others "... Dennis Vermilya.... a teacher in the Towanda School District, and ... Pastor Mel Good, a retired minister from the Forksville Mennonite Church." In 2004, Mr. McBratney was on the board of directors of Firm Foundation of Bradford County.1
  The New Beginnings faith-based, drug and alcohol treatment center would be a residential facility for males only in the general population as well as for prison inmates and those convicted of drug and alcohol related offenses.
  Mr. McBratney is asking Bradford County to subsidize New Beginnings at a rate of $20 per day per Bradford County client.

  1. Effectiveness: Mr. McBratney reported that he had visited two faith-based treatment centers. These were the No Longer Bound treatment center in Georgia which had a "... success rate of 55%" and the Saving Grace Ministries in Buffalo, NY, which had a success rate of 77%, reported Mr. McBratney.
  The Bradford County Alliance for Democracy (BCAD) tried to verify Mr McBratney's report. We called the No Longer Bound and the Saving Grace Ministries drug and alcohol treatment centers which Mr. McBratney said he had visited. We spoke with Scott at No Longer Bound, and Pat at Saving Grace Ministries on March 17, 2006.2 We asked them to send us their research material that supported their rates of success reported by Mr. McBratney. When we did not get the material by March 27, 2006, we called them again that day. As of this report, we have not heard from either treatment center. The web sites for these centers do not make the claims of success Mr. McBratney reported. It is our impression from the research cited below that the statistical validity of the success rates Mr. McBratney reported for treating alcohol and drug addicts are suspect. Certainly, rates of 55% and 77% are so extraordinarily high, these should be doubted until proven.
  Mr. McBratney claimed that "...secular drug and alcohol treatment programs have far lower success rates" than faith-based programs in curing alcohol and drug addicted people. In order to evaluate this claim, we have looked at several of the most important studies that have evaluated the research on the question of whether religion or spirituality have any effect on physical health, and on curing alcohol and drug addiction in particular. (See the appendix) Our assumption is that Mr. McBratney's claim for the success of faith-based alcohol and drug treatment programs is based on his belief that it is the religious component of faith-based programs that makes the difference. There are little data that supports this assumption. (See the appendix) Furthermore, claims of success for alcohol and drug recovery programs in which the identities of the participants are anonymous, as is the case with Alcoholics Anonymous, or from faith-based agencies which refuse to provide their statistical base for their claims of success such as No Longer Bound and the Saving Grace Ministries, should be viewed with skepticism.
  Looking at the larger picture of the connection between the effect of religion and spirituality on health, the relevant research suggests that it is a community of caring people, whether secular or religious, who may make the difference in the recovery of someone who is sick. To date, no carefully designed research has shown that religion or spirituality, per se, makes any difference. (See the appendix)

  2. Constitutionality: Mr. McBratney suggests that the New Beginnings will be a faith-based, residential center in which each client "...would have no contact with his family...[d]uring the first 60 to 90 days." He proposes that the faith-based aspect of New Beginnings will include "...Bible study meetings" and "...a Sunday worship service."
  Clients enrolled in "New Beginnings program would be offenders who would attend the program as a condition of their parole.... still others would be sentenced ... by a judge as an alternative to incarceration. ... New Beginnings would help address a recidivism problem at the jail," Mr. McBratney is reported to have said. However, having individuals directed by a judge to attend a faith-based program such as New Beginnings probably would violate the church-state separation provision of the First Amendment. This is the issue that landed Bradford County and Firm Foundation in federal court in 2005. For example, a federal court has ruled in Destefano, "[t]he treatment program [ under discussion in the Destefano case] included Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which involved prayer in treatment. ... The 'choice' between foregoing the alcohol treatment provided by the State and coping with one's alcoholism without professional assistance or with assistance at substantial expense or inconvenience, on the one hand, and availing oneself of that treatment and thereby 'facing a personally offensive religious reitual,' on the other, may be no choice at all."3 In Lee v. Weisman, the court said, "It is beyond dispute that, at minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which 'establishes a [state] religion or religious faith."4

  3. McBratney's Credentials: Mr. William Henry McBratney, who would head New Beginnings in which its male-only clients will have no contact with their families for 60 to 90 days, has been convicted of sexually molesting teenage boys ("indecent assault without consent") separately in Bradford, Tioga, and Pike Counties, PA. He has served jail time for these convictions.5

4. Recommendation: Based on the above preliminary analysis, we recommend that the Bradford County Criminal Justice Advisory Board and the Bradford County Commissioners reject Mr. McBratney's proposed New Beginnings program because its prospect for being effective is low as discussed above; having drug offenders directed to New Beginnings as described by Mr. McBratney is probably unconstitutional; and Mr. Bill McBratney is unsuited for working with young males based on his past behavior.

APPENDIX:

EFFECT OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY ON HEALTH (RS/H)

In the following we provide supporting explanation and documentation for our claim that, "[t]o date, no carefully designed research has shown that religion or spirituality, per se, makes any difference" in rehabilitating abusers of alcohol and drugs.

PRIMARY RESOURCES:
The primary resources we relied on this supplementary include:

- Powell, Lynda H.; Shahabi, Leila; and Thoresen, Carl E.; "Religion and Spirituality: Linkages to Physical Health," American Psychologists, January 2003, pp. 36 - 52. The authors of this report are researchers at Stanford University, Rush-Presbyterian-St Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, and the University of Miami. - Koenig, Harold; McCullough, Michael E.; and Larson, David B., Handbook of Religion and Health (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 712 pages. The authors are a Psychiatrist, Ph.D. and MD at Duke University Medical Center or Southern Methodists University. -Stein, Ph.D., David M., "The effectiveness of drug and alcohol treatment: A review of the research literature." Utah State University and Salt Lake County Division of Substance Abuse Services 1998, 162 pages http://www.slcosubstanceabuse.org/html/staff.html David M. Stein, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Department Head of Department of Psychology. Utah State University.

  The Handbook of Religion and Health is the most comprehensive summary of RS/H studies to date. Its authors reviewed 1,200 RS/H studies published between 1900 and 2000. This book has been widely praised for its scope and its informative introduction. However, it has been criticized because its commentary on the RS/H studies are not very rigorous scientifically.
  The second resource we used is the article by Powell, Lynda H.; Shahabi, Leila; and Thoresen, Carl E.; "Religion and Spirituality: Linkages to Physical Health," American Psychologists, January 2003, pp. 36 - 52. The authors of this report are researchers from Stanford University, Rush-Presbyterian-St Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, and the University of Miami. Although this article is not as comprehensive as The Handbook of Religion and Health, its standards for analysis RS/H studies is scientifically rigorous.
  The third resource is The Effectiveness of Drug and Alcohol Treatment: A Review of the Research Literature by Stein summarizes the findings of major studies of alcohol and drug treatment programs. For example the 1997, The National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study, a five-year congressionally-mandated study, evaluated 5,406 clients in 78 treatment units including residential centers. It is into this category that New Beginnings fits. However, none of the studies that Stein reviewed were identified as Faith-based.

FINDINGS
  In order to draw a conclusion on the effect of religion and spirituality on health (RS/H), Dr. Lynda H. Powell et al established rigorous criteria to determine which research RS/H studies to include in their evaluation study. The RS/H studies they selected had the best research designs which made it more likely that the conclusions of these RS/H studies provide reliable predictive value.
  In general, good research designs for RS/H studies carefully define the aspect of religion or spirituality being studied, the changes in health being evaluated are scientifically measured in standard ways and the RS/H study appropriately accounts for the variables that may affect the findings of RS/H studies such as age, sex, family economics, and healthy or or unhealthy life-styles. The direction of cause and effect are clear. For example, did church attendance (a measurable behavior) influence health (a measurable set of factors), or did good health allow a person to attend church more regularly?

  Finding #1: After evaluating the best RS/H studies, Powell et al concluded, in summary, that: "Evidence fails to support a link between depth of religiousness and physical health." More specifically, the RS/H research studied by Lynda H. Powel et al found that:

- Patients' religion or spirituality does not stop or slow the progression of cancer or improve recovery from acute illness. Some evidence exists that indicates that religion or spirituality impedes patients' recoveries from acute illness. - There was no positive or negative relationship between the religious variables and the development of disabilities. - Four of five studies indicate that using religion or spirituality to cope with illness does not result in more favorable physical outcomes in hospitalized patients. - Intercessory prayer does not improve the physical recovery from acute [coronary] illness..., as measured by fewer days in the CCU or hospital. - However, the researchers did find evidence that regular church attendance extends a person's life.

  RS/H studies focusing on alcohol and drug addiction were not part of the study by Powell et al.
  On March 30, 2006, the "... most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness" was released on the internet by The American Heart Journal,6 and was reported on by The New York Times. This 10 year, RS/H study evaluated the effectiveness of intercessory prayer. The study included 1,800 patients and was designed to correct the flaws in previous RS/H studies of intercessory prayer. The patients included in ths intercessory prayer study were divided into three groups: patients who did not know they were being prayed for and neither did their medical staff; those patients who knew they were being prayed for but did not know who was praying for them and neither did their medical staff; and a group of patients who were not being prayed for. Those doing the praying were from three different church congregations. Members of these congregations did not know the patients. Those doing the praying were instructed to ask specifically that the patients have "... successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications." The study found, "Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery... And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications ... perhaps because of the expectations..." that they had as a result of knowing they were being prayed for.
  Similarly, "... [a] 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving 40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worst."7

  Finding #2: Koenig et al report in the Handbook of Religion and Health that many RS/H alcohol and drug studies indicate that those people who are involved with religion have a lower rate of alcohol and drugs abuse. The reason for this seem to be that individuals who are part of a religious community are "... less likely to associate with peers who drink and use drugs..." Peer pressure "... is perhaps the most powerful predictor of alcohol or drug use ... ." Hence, "... religion's effects on alcohol and drug use are largely indirect."8
  If this is correct, then it follows that religion's contribution to less drug abuse is by creating communities of non-drinkers or moderate drinkers. If that is the case, then religion or spirituality, per se, may not be the active agent to reduce drug abuse. Rather, it is the social context of the community that makes the difference. For example, the most well-known program, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), relies primarily on creating a volunteer, self-help community of individuals who agree they share a common problem, all of whom want to be free of alcohol or drug addiction.
  Alcohol and drug treatment programs such as New Beginnings have little chance of creating a community of peers similar to a church congregation. Furthermore, if judges are going to direct drug abusers into the proposed New Beginning's program, New Beginnings can't create a community similar to AA's in which individuals have decided for themselves they want to reject drugs as a life-style choice. Unwilling offenders will compromise the peer mix of willing participants.

  Finding #3: It is next to impossible to evaluate the success of any alcohol and drug treatment program by just comparing claims of statistical success because of the uneven quality of the research designs which are responsible for the statistical results, the different treatment approaches used, the difference among abusers' degree of addiction, and the differences among the types of drugs they have abused. As a result, comparing the results of different treatment programs is making apples to oranges comparisons. Therefore, it is difficult to understand what Mr. McBratney's claims of 55% and 77% success mean. Without a clear definition of how success is measured, and a consistent and reliable statistical bases for comparison, we are left with meaningless numbers.
  Nevertheless, David Stein reports there does appear to be some consistent trends across many studies that support a general claim that residential alcohol and drug treatment programs do have measures of success. To be more specific than that is beyond the scope of this essay. For a more thorough understanding of how success might be evaluated, we suggest you look at the original studies. An internet Google search for "alcohol and drug treatment" produces 648,000 hits.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
Many people claim religion is central to their very being. Their religious beliefs frame how they interpret the world, are the foundation of their sense of moral responsibility, are the common ground for life in their congregation, and the motivation for their social commitment. I take those claims seriously.
  However, there are big differences in how people view the world through the lens of their religious convictions. The war in Iraq, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, and many other 50 violent religious conflicts in the world are products, in large measure, of very different religious perspectives about which religion has the ultimate Truth, which religious group should have rights to contested sacred ground, which group is the victim, and should religious or secular laws control civil society?
  Many fervently believe that intercessory prayers can heal sick people if they are prayed for by believers. However, believing does not make a fervently held belief correct any more than fervently believing that the earth was flat made it flat or that it was formed in six days. Columbus' trip demonstrated the earth is round and the research reported above in this appendix has shown that intercessory prayer does not make the sick well.
  Although religion can play very positive roles in many peoples' lives and in local communities, not all activities carried out under the banner of religion are beneficial. Federally funded abstinence-only sex education programs are an example.9 In Texas, then Governor George W. Bush spent state tax dollars to fund religious institutions to provide social services. According to a study by the Texas Freedom Network, these grants resulted in a system of faith-based social services that "has lowered the standards of client health safety and quality of care in Texas. ... Most of the exempt faith-based programs have no medical component and rely instead on treating drug and alcohol addiction as a sin, not a disease. ... Clients are being ordered by the courts to attend unlicenced faith-based programs." These programs are "... unregulated, prone to favoritism and co-mingling of funds, and even dangerous to the very people [they are]... supposed to serve." The report continued, "In Texas, faith-based deregulation has been a refuge for facilities with a history of regulatory violations, a theological objection to state oversight and a higher rate of abuse and neglect."10
  Therefore, all programs funded by the public should meet the same test of efficacy and the same fiduciary standards of accountability. Unfortunately, federally funded faith-based programs such as Firm Foundation of Bradford County and abstinence-only sex education programs have not been required to meet the same efficacy or fiduciary standards that secular programs are required to meet.11 As a result, billions in federal spending on faith-based programs remain unaccounted for according to the federal Office of Management and Budget, and it has not been shown that the pubic has gotten its monies' worth from faith-based programs has as a result of creditable audits and evaluations conducted by funding agencies.

END NOTES:
1  Blain, Laura, and Moeller, Clark, Performance of Firm Foundation of Bradford County, Bradford County Alliance for Democracy, 2004, p. 4.
2  No Longer Bound, Cumming, Georgia; www.nolongerbound.com; 770-886-7873: I had a conversation on 3/17/06, with Scott, who said they don't really care about statistics, they are dealing with individuals one at a time. They don't need to send out statistics to anyone. The 55% success rate figure probably came from records and perhaps someone decided to give these to Mr. McBratney during an interview. Scott will talk to his executive director Mike Harden to see if he can release stats; if so, Scott will send them with other promotional material. He said their Website is outdated and a new site will be going up in a few weeks. - Laura Blain, researcher.
   Saving Grace Ministries, Williamsville, New York; www.savinggraceministries.net; 716-689-6480: I had a conversation on 3/17/06 with Pat. She will need to check with her director before she releases any information. Her director called and wanted a written request for the information. This letter was sent 3/29/06. - Laura Blain, researcher.
3  Destefano v Emergency Housing Group, Inc, 247 F.ed 397, 412 (2d Cir. 2001) as cited in Moeller v Bradford County, Civil Action NO. 3:CV-05-0334 (Judge Munley), p. 21.
4  As cited in Moeller v Bradford County, Civil Action NO. 3:CV-05-0334,p.12
5  William Henry McBratney pleaded guilty to and was convicted of "indecent assault without consent," in three counties according to court records in Bradford County: Criminal Docket # CP-08-CR-0000106-1992. The other counties were Tioga and Pike counties, PA. (Tioga County: #347 Criminal Action 1991, and Pike County: #144- 1991 Criminal Action.)
6  Benson H, Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Lam P, Bethea CF, Carpenter W, Levitsky S, Hill PC, Clem Jr. DW, Jain MK, Drumel D, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Marek D, Rollins S, Hibberd PL, "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer," American Heart Journal, April 2006 (Vol. 151, Issue 4), pp 934-942.
7  Carey, Benedict, "Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer," The New York Times, 31 March 2006, pp. 1 and 15.
8  Koenig, Harold; McCullough, Michael E.; and Larson, David B., Handbook of Religion and Health (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 173, 174.
9  Moeller, Clark, The Consequences of Abstinence-Only Sex Education, Nov. 3, 2005, 10 pages (see www.bcad.info )
10  Texas Freedom Network, The Texas Faith-Based Initiative at Five Years: Warning Signs as President Bush Expands Texas-Style Program to National Level (Austin, TX: Texas Freedom Network, 2002), p. 2. Also: "Many drug treatment professionals were thrilled to hear a president direct the nation's attention to a social epidemic [drugs] that they say has too long been ignored and under financed. But some were troubled that of all the nation's treatment programs, the president seemed to hold up as a model deserving government support a program that is religiously sectarian, unlicensed, untested and not clinical in its methods." [Source: Goodstein, Laurie, "Bush's Focus on Antidrug Ministry Irks Some," The New York Times, 23 February 2003, p. 18.]
11  Blain, Laura, and Moeller, Clark, Performance of Firm Foundation of Bradford County, Bradford County Alliance for Democracy, 2004, p. A1-2. 30 pages (See www.bcad.info )