Church or jail?

[elf]

The city of Bay Minette, Alabama has a new option for some misdemeanor convicts: attend church for a year to stay out of jail. This saves the department $75 per day per inmate, and they hope it will "change the lives of many people heading down the wrong path."

56 churches in the county are involved. (The city has ~8000 residents.) I couldn't find a list of the churches. Want to guess how many are Jewish, Islamic or Pagan? (Hint: the AU couldn't find any.)

Even the Christian Post notes that it's problematic, reporting that the policy advisor for AU says "the ROC program is offensive to nonreligious people as well as people of other faiths, since offenders are not given a choice that represents their beliefs." So, apparently, "church" means "Christian church."

AU is in contact with them, so I won't step on their toes trying to find out the list of churches. I'm sure that if it's a public-info document (it should be; participation in gov't funded programs is kind of a public thing), we'll soon get a list of the churches involved.

Comments

[herlander_refugee]

What a crock of crap. I think I'd prefer to cost them $75 a day.

[serpentrose]

One of my twitter people (@rharron) pointed out something interesting: it's worth noting that that law says "you must attend church", not "you must attend church without your ipod and bag of cheesies"

[elf]

They have to get verification from the pastor, so it's likely "you must attend church politely, according to behavioral norms for the rest of the community." Which may allow for iPod but probably not a bag of cheesies.

And we don't have access to the full terms of the contract; while they're probably considered "obvious and normal" by the local police, it's likely they run into as many civil rights violations as the basic concept of "you can avoid jail time by spending time in a limited selection of religious establishments." Not sure if they require any kind of *participation* beyond attendance. (Do people have to sing? Close their eyes during the prayers? Stand/sit/kneel according to instructions?)

[serpentrose]

Anyone who thinks anything is "Obvious and normal" isn't looking at the real world, what's "normal" for me and the people I associate with is far different than what is "normal" for certain other groups.

While I do like there being alternatives to jail for certain crimes, I do not believe obligatory church attendance is a good one for several reasons.

1: It must either allow any church, which would include some that encourage anti-social behavior. OR it infringes on religious freedoms, as it would require government approval of certain churches and not others. (And this isn't getting into the freedom to ditch the whole religion thing altogether.)

2a: It changes church from somewhere to go for spiritual fulfillment and community support to a punishment.

2b: Having people present who are there under duress undermines the sense of community. (This is one of the reasons I resent churches that use social pressure to enforce attendance.)

There are some other things that I'm not quite sure how to verbalize at the moment, one of which has to do with my viewing attending and pretending to believe as "Lying to god", which is unethical.

The Best Rejoiner

[herlander_refugee]

I desperately needed someone to put this in perfect snarky perspective. And someone did!