New York Times June 12, 1996

N.Y Court Lets Inmate Refuse An Alcoholic Program

By James Barron

Ruling that Alcoholics Anonymous “engages in religious activity and religious proselytization,” New York states highest court declared Tuesday that state prison officials were wrong to penalize an inmate who stopped attending the organizations self-help meetings because he said he was an atheist or an agnostic.

The court ordered prison officials not to tie the man’s eligibility for a family reunion program to his refusal to take part in the Alcoholics Anonymous sessions at Shawangunk state prison in Ulster County.

Alcohol and drug treatment programs are fixtures in the states 69 prisons: 15,000 inmates, or two in nine, go through substance-abuse rehabilitation every year.

About a third of the participants had been sent to prison for drug convictions., but another 40 percent have other drug-related problems: they committed a burglary so they could fence the goods they stole for cash for drugs, for example. Or they failed the drug test inmates are given when they arrive.

But the high court, in a 5-2 ruling, said that state prison officials violated the constitutional rights of the inmate who brought the case. David Griffin, a former heroin addict who complained that he found the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings objectionable because of agnostic or atheistic views he has held since the 1950’s.

An atheist denies the existence of God; an agnostic holds that the human mind cannot know whether there is a God. The court said Griffin had presented evidence that he had held both views he has held both views at certain times.

“A fair reading of the fundamental AA doctrinal writings discloses that there dominant theme is unequivocally religious,” the court said. Adherence to the AA fellowship entails engagement in religious activity and religious proselytization.”

The Pataki administration, which has lashed out at judges whom it considers soft on crime, immediately attacked the court of appeals. The ruling defies common sense,” state Attorney General Dennis Vacco said. “This ruling erodes the authority of correction officials to set certain requirements in order for inmates to enjoy their prison perks – in this case, conjugal visits by a convicted pimp with a history of drug abuse.”

Vacco said he was considering whether to appeal the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alcoholics Anonymous would not say whether it saw itself as a religious organization. A spokeswoman for the group in Manhatten, who insisted that her name not be printed because she is also an AA member, said the group “has always refrained from commenting on out side issues.”

“We do not want to take any stand that might deny an alcoholic AA as a resource,” she said. “We’re non-professionals who meet together to share our personal experience, strength and hope.

Other groups who seek to help people with alcohol and drug problems took issue with the ruling.

“I think it’s a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water,” said Abukarriem Shabazz, the president of the New York Association of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Treatment Providers, which represents 130 member organizations and 20 coalitions.

“The bad situation was not the AA; that’s the baby,” he said. “The bath water was the punitiveness because the person did not participate. Change that. But you put people’s sobriety and recovery at risk if you remove a significant, important support mechanism.”

But Norman Siegal, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the decision constitutionally correct.

“It’s important the court is recognizing the fundamental principal that government can’t force people to participate in religious activities that violate their own tenets,” he said. “Also, there’s a sense more and more that whoever goes to jail forfeits all constitutional rights." The court is saying you don’t.

The program Griffin dropped out of was run by councillors who are full-time state employees, not, for example, volunteers from Alcoholics Anonymous, whose programs are often based at local churches.

But he stated that at a hearing with officials at Shawangunk, “both staff and inmate representatives acknowledged that the ASAT program at the facility was a religious program.

Noting that God is mentioned in 5 of the 12-steps that are the cornerstone of the Alcoholics Anonymous program, The Court of Appeals said the Appellate Division had wrongly applied” too narrow a concept of religion or religious activity.” The high court said that Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were, “heavily laced with at least general religious content.”

But the majority, in a decision written by judge Howard Levine, said that it did not mean to denigrate the Alcoholics Anonymous approach to fighting addiction. Nor, the decision said, should the prison system scrap drug-and-alcohol abuse treatment programs if they are offered voluntarily.

Judges Joseph. W. Bellacosa and Carmen B. Ciparick dissented from the ruling.

Richard Kohler, a former New York city corrections commissioner who is now a professor at the John J. College of Criminal Justice, agreed that the case turned on First Amendment issues.

He said that other courts had concluded that corrections officials had to raise legitimate concerns if they infringed inmates’ constitutional rights – for example, citing security concerns as a reason for refusing to let inmates gather for prayer services Friday, when they are scheduled foe a work detail.

“It’s very difficult for the state to show there is a legitimate state interest in forcing someone into rehab program when there’s no evidence it works in the first place,” he said.