Alabama Judge Gives Criminals Choice

[Forever Sunshine]

A small-town judge in Alabama is giving non-violent offenders a choice at sentencing: go to jail or go to church.

Under a program dubbed "Operation Restore Our Community," the city judge in Bay Minette lets misdemeanor offenders serve time and pay a fine or go to church every Sunday for a year, according to WKRG.com.

If offenders choose church, they can pick the place of worship as long as they check in weekly with the pastor and police. After a year of Sundays in the pew, the offender's case will be dismissed.

Bay Minette Police Chief Mike Rowland says the program could change the lives of people heading down the wrong path. So far, 56 churches are participating. Rowland said the program is Constitutional because offenders get to choose between jail and church.

[isa]

Hello Funshine. Hope you're well there.

A small-town judge in Alabama is giving non-violent offenders a choice at sentencing: go to jail or go to church.

Wow… what a backwards place. There’s something quite despicable about trying to shanghai people into religion.

I presume the Church is getting quite desperate then. What next - rohypnol baptisms? ;D

[Forever Sunshine]

Inny! I am doing exceptionally well, thanks. You?

My mouth actually dropped open when I read this little tid-bit. I'm surprised parents, or the community, are not raising some hell about it.

[isa]

Hey, well that’s good news then. Excellent. I’m all good myself, thank you.

I'm surprised parents, or the community, are not raising some hell about it.

Yes, well, with these ‘small towns’ in Alabama I wonder whether the locals aren’t actually in favour of it?… ya know?… I never cease to be surprised at the apparent level of fundamentalism existent in such places - or so it seems from what can be gleamed from various media resources. The sort of towns where they want to take evolution off of the education curriculum etc.

I wonder how many criminals will choose jail over church?

[Thor]

Hmmmmm...

52 weeks x 2 hours each Sunday (combo of in-pew and travel, as an average) = 104 hours...

Ya'll can Do Time and Pay-a-Fine...

Ya'll can do 104 hours of church-attendance, spread over a year...

Ya'll can do 104 hours of general-purpose community service...

Ya'll can do 104 hours of court-mandated counseling...

...and such-like...

There's probably nothing wrong with offering church attendance as an option, if there are other non-religious alternatives to Jail-Time-Plus-Fines...

Even somebody like me, who oftentimes takes-up the Advocate role on behalf of Religion and its practicioners, can see something wrong in the idea of having no Secular Alternative(s) to choose from...

And, of course, it's what happens, when Judge Billy-Jo-Bob hangs around Hole-in-the-Wall, Alabama, for far, far too long...

[pilgrim47]

the city judge in Bay Minette lets misdemeanor offenders serve time and pay a fine or go to church every Sunday for a year, according to WKRG.com.

Even though this is more than a bit out of the ordinary, I see no real problem with this... One can be as bad, or as good as the other, and both can be a learning experience if one pays attention... Your choice... What the 'hell'?

[sgtjer]

Not likely too much diversity in Alabama churches, so the church options are probably few.

If it were me, I'd consider who I'd rather mingle with, the prisoners or the parishioners .....

[susala]

I think this is beyond abusive. Government needs to stay out of religion and I say that as a fairly religious person.

[susala]

Laura Bassett has an excellent article on HuffPo today describing how a bunch of religious bigots otherwise known as the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops are conducting a jihad against women by lobbying Congress to pass laws that deny all women, not just Catholics, reproductive choice including restricting their access to birth control and allowing hospitals to deny women life-saving abortions in emergency situations. This lobbying is being conducted illegally as the Council, as part of the Catholic Church, is tax-exempt. Consequently, my taxes are going to support an organization that is working to deny me control of my own body and even cause my death.

There is a possiblity that these twisted men are, in fact, so determined to do this because they've lost lucrative American and foreign social service contracts because of their refusal to offer the women served a full range of services including information and access to birth control. If they can make the denial of basic rights to women public policy in the USA, they can get back into the very lucrative business of pretending to help the victims of sexual trafficking.

Government needs to stay the hell out of religion and vice versa.

[shirina]

Fortunately, a bill like that would never pass Obama's desk, and the Senate would never vote for it anyway, much less override Obama's veto. The House .... eh, it's hard to say with them. All they've done so far since the Republicans took it over is to try and legislate morality. Did you know that they just recently voted on the reaffirmation that "In God we trust" was the national motto? This was after they passed a bill claiming they would no longer waste time on bills celebrating or commending any person(s) or organizations. In fact, they refused to even consider a bill that formally congratulated the troops and intelligence community for taking down Osama bin Laden. But they're reaffirming a national religious motto. LOL!

I try to tell people that Christian fascism is alive and well in America, but most Christians get all bent out of shape when I do. Tyranny is never recognized as such when the tyrant "speaks your language."

[susala]

We may well have a Republican Senate after the 2012 election and you must have forgotten Obama's executive order given after the healthcare bill was signed which restricted abortion. Read the article. Obama will sell out women in a New York minute if it means he can get something else he wants. Have you so soon forgotten his comments that women need to talk to their pastors for help in making the decision or that psychiatric illness is not a legitimate reason to make the decision in the third-trimester? Obama may not be as hostile to women's reproductive rights as the madmen on the right but he's no bold defender of those rights either.

[shirina]

I'm not suggesting Obama is the Jeanne d'Arc of women's rights. My point was that things were a mess, and the only reason why the Republicans won the House was because everyone HOPED they would begin to set things right.

Their actions (or lack of it) regarding the economy et. al. might ensure that, not only will the Senate remain in Democrat hands, but the House may revert back to the Democrats, as well. I do not think the American people gambled on more Republicanism just so the House could sit around writing abortion bills and reaffirming the national motto.

I am definitely a leftist, but I also say that if the Republicans or the right-wingers actually come up with a good idea, I'll vote for them. I'm not blindly partisan. Thus, even though I didn't WANT the Republicans to win the House, a part of me also sat back and said, "Okay, boys, let's see what you've got."

So far, they've been almost farcically inept.

[susala]

I don't see anything in your response about Obama and his likely reaction to such a bill.

[shirina]

Obama would never pass a sweeping measure like banning all birth control in the United States. That's about as plausible as Islam taking over the world. If nothing else, Big Pharma rakes in a fortune from the manufacture of birth control and contraceptives, so you can bet their lobbyists - with very deep pockets - will be busy at work. Blind religious fascism would never win over money - money wins every time, even among the religious.

So while like that council of bishops can spew their fantasies and pretend that they have the clout to affect American domestic policy, they don't. In fact, the only reason why anyone wrote an article about it is because of how stupidly irrational such a proposal is. If they were lobbying for something sane, none of us would probably even know about it.

By the way, do you happen to have the link to that story? I might use it for a discussion elsewhere ... but I don't want it to be a "well I heard it from someone on the internet" scenario. ;D

A note to board staff: Censoring the word "ID10T" is taking things to the extreme, don't you think?

[susala]

www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/the-men-behind-the-war-on_n_1069406.html

As I said in my first post, it's by Laura Bassett and posted on HuffPo.

The anti-choice forces have had many victories in the past few years and they've gotten progressively more bold. The "Personhood" bill in MS is a direct challenge to Big Pharma and it has almost no opposition in the state, even from Democrats. Obama will do what's best for him. It just might be that Big Pharma offers him less dough than a coalition of Catholics, evangelical Protestants and the like might provide.

[shirina]

Thanks for the link, susala. I know some people will cry foul because it's from HuffPo, but oh well.

Here's another one you might be interested in also by Laura Bassett:

"Mississippi voters will be allowed to decide on a ballot measure that defines "personhood" from the moment of fertilization, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled last week. The measure could potentially outlaw abortions, birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research across the state."

www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/mississippi-personhood-law-abortions_n_959100.html

This country has gone insane. Mississippi actually wants to grant a fertilized egg the status of a Person, with all the rights and privileges thereof. Killing a fertilized egg would, in theory, warrant the charge of 1st Degree Murder. Thus, using birth control could, also in theory, become a capital crime. Madness if it ever existed.

I'm sure you're aware that the world population hit 7 billion not long ago. Do you remember when we hit 6 billion? It was in 1999. It only took 12 years to add a billion more people to the planet, and look at us - the competition for resources, the escalating prices, the poverty and starvation, the wars, the disease, and the abhorrent suffering - we can't create an equitable world for the 7 billion we already have, and it's only going to get worse.

And Mississippi, and other states that are sure to follow, wants to add to the problem. The 300 million we currently have could swell to a billion in just a few decades. This would create a humanitarian nightmare. This is all so unfathomable - I feel like my alarm clock should be buzzing any minute so I can awaken from this ridiculous version of "reality."

[susala]

I was stunned to hear that there was little or no opposition to this law from Democrats in the state and that, in fact, some supported it. It's beyond bizarre.

I'll have been dead for a while but there will be a time in the not-too-distant future when the entire world will be engulfed in a violent war over disappearing resources. I know that it's happening in various parts of the world now but it's going to spread to the so-called developed nations before long.

Who's wearing an IUD or taking the Pill should be the least of our concerns. Truly, the inmates are well on the way to running the asylum.