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"

The Best Rejoiner

[herlander_refugee]

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