If you're charged with a nonviolent crime in one Alabama town, you might just have the chance to pray it all away.
Starting this week, under a new program called Operation ROC (Restore Our Community), local judges in Bay Minette, Alabama, will give those found guilty of misdemeanors the choice of serving out their time in jail, paying a fine or attending church each Sunday for a year.
The goal of the program is to help steer those who are not yet hardened criminals the chance to turn their lives around. Those who choose to go to church (there are no mosques or synagogues in the area) will have to check in with a pastor and the police department each week, CNN affiliate WKRG reported. Once you attend church every week for a year the case would be dismissed.
Police Chief Mike Rowland said the measure is one that would help save money and help direct people down the right path. Rowland told WKRG it costs $75 a day to house each inmate.
"Longevity is the key," he told WKRG.
He said he believes 30-day drug programs don't have the long-term capabilities to heal someone in the ways the ROC program might.
Police in the town said they think it is a simple choice, but others think it's a choice that shouldn't even be offered.
The ACLU in Alabama said the idea is "blatantly unconstitutional," according to the Alabama Press-Register.
"It violates one basic tenet of the Constitution, namely that government can’t force participation in religious activity," Olivia Turner, executive director for the ACLU of Alabama told the paper.
Rowland acknowledged there were concerns about separation of church and state complaints but said he didn't see it as too big of a problem because offenders weren't being forced to attend church, they are just being given the option.
The offenders who voluntarily choose church over jail get to pick the churches they attend. If they complete a year’s attendance, Rowland said, their criminal case would be dismissed and your record would be expunged.
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Hmmmm, 12 months of weekend tedium in honor of a incorporeal being that I can't prove exists...? I'd choose jail time personally... Before anybody thinks that going to church serves any real identifiable purpose, should we not do some investigating first? I mean, the majority of inmates in jails and prisons all over the United States, are religious and are attending some sort of church service in prison. This is just an excuse for the state to save money, a highly illegal way, but a way none the less.
The religious state it's voluntary (I am sorry, but even if the "separation of church and state" was found to be "technically" not problematic because it was "voluntary", this is still discriminatory against those who are non religious.), and the non-religious are already calling upon the ACLU. To which I say, no folks... It's going to require going a bit higher on the food chain than that, as this concerns a little known thing called the US CONSTITUTION.
But can you just imagine it: The wealthy prim and proper lady in her perfectly starched dress and every hair in place, sitting next to the guy who looks and dresses like Jesus but who's beard smells like onions and beer and is only there because he beat the shit out of his wife and child the night before and doesn't have the money to pay the fine, and doesn't want to sit in jail...
In my opinion, the asinine, ignorant fanatic, judge stepped way over the line. It is not in his authority to send people to "church". This man should be removed from the bench, though I should note that I find the idea of "church as a form of punishment" to be immensely amusing.
This isn't about my hating religion. It's about hating the fact that religious people are telling people "If I commit a non-violent crime, I won't have to go to jail, I'll just sit through some church services." and letting people get away with criminal activity, becuase of the misguided childish notion that if they go to church somehow somehow they will magically be turned into non-criminals. You can believe that naive notion if you want and no one will hate you for it, but keep it out of government, and don't make it law, that's just absurd. Instead, let's do away with the foolishness and brainwashing of religion and give folks the option of jail in other ways, a fine, or community service, where they can actually HELP the society they wronged. Going to church does no good to anybody except the church itself, who without the ignorant and the easily brainwashed filling a collection plate week after week, would lose their tax-free income and go out of business.
This also lends the assumption that people who attend church regularly are more moral and ethical than those who don't. That has not be my experience of life, nor is there any objective evidence of that. Also, this assumes that someone who attends church every week – against his or her free will – is the same as someone who attends by choice. Not true, either. And, oh yeah, some of us are sick of having Christianity shoved down our throats and fear a society where the lines between church and state are blurred. Believe what you choose, but leave me alone to believe what I choose.
It also violates the equal treatment clause. Those who can attend church without compromising their beliefs get to have their case dismissed, others do not. This is obvious coercion.
If you pay the fine, you'll have a criminal record...
If you go to jail you'll have a criminal record...
If you attend church they drop the charges and your record will be expunged.
The potential for abuse here is endless. Are there now going to be a rash of arrests for jaywalking and sidewalk spitting of all those either not Christian or not Christian "enough"? Attend church every week or rot in jail......sounds way too close to "Convert or die" to me.
Personally, I don't give a fuck where the jail is. I'd gladly strike up a romantic relationship with some tatted butch chick before listening to some religious ass-hat spew his brainwashing poison in my general direction every week for a year. Wait, scratch that, how about I instead embrace
Pastafarianism and buy myself a certificate of ordination for $20, declare myself a church and be misdomeanor free...
THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER FOR LIFE!
