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 offenders case will be dismissed.
via NBC San Diego.
This might be good for the offender, but it won’t be good for the church. There are already way too many who attend church for the wrong reasons. It tends to secularize the church and ruin the primary reason for the religious to go at all.
Not to mention, it’s a flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution. Eugene Volokh, one of the leading 1st Amendment scholars, addresses the issue here: http://volokh.com/2011/09/25/church-as-alternative-to-jail/