Rather than send non-violent criminals to jail, the small Alabama town of Bay Minette (population 7,700) wants to offer church as an alternative to incarceration.

 

Under the city’s Operation Restore Our Community (ROC), misdemeanor offenders can avoid serving time in prison and paying fines by attending the church of their choice for one year. They must meet with clergy and police on a weekly basis to ensure compliance with the program, which has 56 area churches participating.

 

Supporters of ROC say it has two advantages.

 

First, making criminals go to church provides them with support services, as well as a positive environment that is more likely to help them turn their lives around than going to jail.

 

Second, ROC could help the community save money, given that it costs $75 per inmate, per day, to house prisoners.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is opposing the program, and has asked the city to cease ROC.

 

In a letter to Bay Minette officials, the ACLU wrote that it supports alternative sentencing programs as long as they don’t violate the U.S. Constitution. The civil liberties group insists that ROC violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as well as Section 3 of the Alabama Constitution, “which provides that ‘no one shall be compelled by law to attend any place of worship.’”

 

The ACLU would seem to have the law on its side. As the Mobile Press-Register pointed out in an editorial, in a 1947 case, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, a native Alabamian, stated that government at any level cannot “force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess belief or disbelief in any religion.”

 

Nonetheless, Bay Minette Police Chief Michael Rowland hopes to activate the program on October 11.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Letter to Bay Minette City Officials (American Civil Liberties Union) (pdf)

Well-Intentioned, But Church as Alternative Sentence Probably Won't Fly (Editorial) (editorial, Mobile Press-Register)

Alabama City to Let Non-Violent Criminals Choose Jail or…Weekly Church Attendance (by Billy Hallowell, The Blaze)

ACLU: Ala. Town Cannot Impose Church Sentences (Associated Press)