Second Chance Program

The involvement of Nevada Assembly member Sharron Angle with Second Chance was a significant issue in the 2010 United States Senate elections.

[2] Pendery also worked in an official capacity for Criminon, a Scientology-related program for prisoners that is based on the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

[4] In October 2001, two officials from Erie County Holding Center in Buffalo, New York visited Ensenada at a Scientology patron's expense.

[8] It emerged that the trip to Ensenada was being underwritten by Randall Suggs,[9] an Arizona businessman and wealthy Scientologist who was later to play a major role in bankrolling Second Chance in New Mexico.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley (D) advised legislators to vote against Angle's proposal, and the office of Governor Kenny Guinn (R) indicated that they wanted nothing to do with it.

Angle's previous support for Second Chance was used in attack ads by Sue Lowden, her opponent for the Republican nomination, and by incumbent Senator Harry Reid (D).

An advert by Lowden portrayed Second Chance as a cushy health spa with inmates wearing prison uniforms being tended to by attractive masseuses.

The voiceover asserted that, "Career politician and Senate candidate Sharron Angle sponsored a bill that would have used tax dollars to give massages to prisoners.

[15]) In 2002, Pendery gave a presentation on Second Chance to a conference of the National Foundation of Women Legislators being held in San Diego, California.

[1] Crook convinced other New Mexico legislators to pass a bill allowing judges to sentence offenders to Second Chance in lieu of prison.

[1] He said that he was concerned by Second Chance's use of unlicensed substance abuse professionals, that its administrators were vague about its treatment model and that its corporate structure was unclear.

[15] Sheriff Darren White Bernalillo County told the Albuquerque Journal that he was "very, very skeptical" about Second Chance and would prefer the criminal justice system to "fund what we already know works.

By the end of 2007, Bernalillo County had ceased sending prisoners to the program and Second Chance's income from state funding was below the anticipated level.

[19] An additional blow came when Brennan was forced to resign from his post as president of Second Chance after being charged with committing false imprisonment and battery on a household member.

The commissioners stated that Second Chance had billed the county $4,500 without a signed contract and was not sending requested progress reports on the inmates in their care.

[24] However, Albuquerque Public Safety Director Pete Dinelli accused Second Chance of transferring inmates out of the facility just before the deadline expired.

[25] The city's chief of police reported: "Acting upon a tip that inmates were going to be moved this morning from the Second Chance Center located on the West Mesa, I had personnel monitor the area.

[28] By November 2008, it had received more than $1.5 million in public funding[21] but by March 2009 it was reported to owe over $672,000 to the state, the city and the IRS in tax liens, utility bills and unpaid rent.

However, neither Second Chance's President Joy Westrum nor her husband, Executive Director Rick Pendery, have explained the roles or functions of the two entities.

Inmates and employees were required to go through courses and "ethics training" that were taken directly from Scientology; Scientology-related entities played a major role in operations at Second Chance; the program was predominately funded by wealthy Scientologist donors; and the program materials were taken directly from Narconon and Criminon, both run by Scientologists and classified by the IRS as "scientology-related entities".

In the case of the New Mexico Second Chance program, inmates spent four hours a day in the sauna, interrupted only by short breaks to drink water, eat raw vegetables or take a shower.

The sauna-based part of the program is based on Hubbard's belief that the body's fatty tissue accumulates drugs and other toxins over time.

"[1] A similar program was reviewed by the National Council Against Health Fraud, which found that such detoxification methods do the opposite of what Hubbard claimed.

[35] The British sociologist Roy Wallis comments that Study Technology forms a key element of Scientology indoctrination by "assist[ing] those who are slow in grasping the principles of the movement."

Thereby, Wallis notes, "the individual learns to doubt his own judgement; to locate some meaning in the undoubted mystification of much of Hubbard's writing; or to acquiesce to some half-comprehended and yet half-incomprehensible statement in the hope that all will be made clear to him at some later point."

The extreme tedium of "word clearing" leads, in Wallis's view, to "a further suspension of the individual's critical faculty, or to its inhibition, and to the ready acceptance of Hubbard's formulations as intrinsically meaningful.

"[36] The Way To Happiness is described by Joy Westrum of Second Chance as "a nonreligious moral code written by L. Ron Hubbard and based wholly on common sense.

"[40] Criminon's Ups and Downs in Life course, which Second Chance uses, teaches the concept of "suppressive persons" and "potential trouble sources".

Ruth A. Tucker wrote that the concept appeared to have first been introduced into Scientology in the 1960s "as membership grew and as authoritarian control [by Hubbard] increased."

Tucker notes that many of those who joined Scientology during this period were "well-educated people who prided themselves in independent thinking [who] struggled with the idea of allowing any other individual to completely dominate their opinions.