That's a pretty freaking dramatic shift.
If any of the counseling programs beloved of liberals were anywhere near this effective, it would be shouted from the rooftops.
But since Christians are having the effect, it will be ignored, if not prohibited.
Well, it's playing with numbers a bit, since it says:
"reoffending dropped from 55 per cent to eight per cent for those who took part in his InnerChange prison programme."
Say there are 100 prisoners, and 8 of them are expected to keep clean while 92 are expected to reoffend. That's an 8% success rate.
Then Mr. Colson shows up and offers his InnerChange program. 15 inmates, let's say, sign up and 85 don't.
If the 8 non-reoffenders all sign up with his group, they will be about 55% of the 15 member InnerChange program. So that's a 55% success rate - not for the prison as a whole, but for InnerChange.
In other words, the percentage of reoffenders within InnerChange is meaningless unless we have the percentage of total inmates who joined InnerChange.
There may have been no change at all in the total percentage of reoffenders. I doubt it, but the data we're given doesn't prove anything.
Actually my math is incorrect.
If 92% of the inmates who opted for InnerChange were drawn from among that non-reoffending 45 (say 12 inmates sign up, and 11 of them are drawn from that 45) then it does not indicate that InnerChange was a drtamatic success in the context of the whole prison population.
Even with the corrected math, there is not enough data given to prove the thesis that InnerChange had a dramatic effect overall.
The total reoffending rate among all inmates, not just InnerChange volunteers, is the key stat that is missing.