Some drug and alcohol offenders can now trade in jail time for worship services.
Laurel District Judge Michael Caperton is giving second offenders a three-way option between jail, rehabilitation or ten days of worhship services.
In his 12 years on the bench, Judge Caperton says the drug and alcohol problem is only getting worse. So he decided a change needed to be made.
"What you hope to do in sentencing is make a difference in somebody's life. I thought well perhaps if we do the drug-alcohol evaluation in treatment, if you're on a second charge that was something additional and then I thought well there's often times a cost is associated with it or people may have an objection to that and I said well attend worship services, Judge Caperton said.
Only second offenders with drug and alcohol misdemeanors will have the option and even though the choice to attend ten worship services is not mandatory, the American Civil Liberties Union says it isn't constitutional.
"The judge is giving the option to some people that's not available to other people and that would be those who don't have a faith or who don't practice a religion," Beth Wilson, Executive Director of ACLU KY
Judge Caperton says if he believed it wasn't constitutional he wouldn't have made it an option or even wanted to.
"As long as I think it makes a difference in someone's life, I'll stick to it till somebody tells me not to," Judge Caperton said.
Faith-based treatment for addicts is available in Clay County at Lifeline Ministries where 135 people seek help every week and Pastor Doug Abner says the results of helping addicts recover is worth a shot.
"They're crying, they're talking about how for the first time they have hope that they can stay off drugs and we're pretty excited about that," Doug Abner said.
Judge Caperton says so far the ACLU has not filed a lawsuit against him.
Also interesting to note, the judge's secretary says several people have called across the country calling him a hero for giving addicts this option.
Judge Caperton says so far he's had a good response from those who took the choice of worship services.
Well, if he can find a way to do it without discriminating on a person's religion (or lack thereof) then good luck to him. I just don't see how it's possible though to not run foul of the 1st amendment and I don't see how a judge wouldn't know that.
Actually Ddrak, it's voluntary. He can choose the jail time if he prefers. And I'm sure he gets more than one option as far as WHICH church.
No First Amendment violation to see here, move along.
That said, I'm uncertain whether it'll do much good with recidivism rates. Much like any form of rehab, you need to want to listen before church services will do you any good. If they're just playing the game to get out easy from jail I'm not sure what the point is.
I read somewhere that the judge said it could be any denomination. I suppose that means Islam, Buddhism, etc. as well, but you never know in a place like this. South-Central Kentucky isn't a very diverse area as far as I know. As much as I despise Bible Beaters and anything remotely close to a Church-State relationship, I can't say I disagree with what he's doing if and ONLY if the statistics show that its working. Jails are overcrowded, pretty badly in Kentucky too, and I can't argue against alternative punishment, so long as it works. I suspect, however, that this system would get abused more than used. I can't imagine anyone would choose jail time over church services. It just seems all too reminiscent of some of the older Christian conversion tactics.
Well, if nothing else, it provides the criminal access to counseling -- that's what a priest does when he's not passing out wine and crackers or molesting altar boys -- that the State doesn't have to pay for.
Also, given some of what I've seen mental health professionals advocating, it's probably wiser to just talk to a pastor.
No1 Can Disagree that Schools where Bible classes are teached..you have less Teen Pregnency.....Violence..Higher Grades..Higher Graduation Rate...etc..etc...
Tholiak, did you attend "Schools where Bible classes are teached"? Because if so, you are a horrible example of the success of "Schools where Bible classes are teached".
Tholiak Eladamri wrote:No1 Can Disagree that Schools where Bible classes are teached..you have less Teen Pregnency.....Violence..Higher Grades..Higher Graduation Rate...etc..etc...
Now is this less Teen Preg per quanity or %?
Becouse every (sept for a very few*) Church School girl I knew growing up was a MOM no later then 18 most at 17.
*they could have been a mom at 19 when I did't know them anymore how ever.
Tholiak Eladamri wrote:No1 Can Disagree that Schools where Bible classes are teached..you have less Teen Pregnency.....Violence..Higher Grades..Higher Graduation Rate...etc..etc...
The causal link there is questionable, at best. Private schools have barriers to entry that public schools lack. The baseline of privately schooled students tends to be more affluent than that of their publicly schooled counterparts.
Simply put, private schools don't have their averages dragged down by the dregs that public schools must deal with.
That and private schools cost real money. When a student gets failing grades in a private school the parents really have no incentive to keep them there. Assuming the school has not kicked out the student anyway, the parents can send their kid back to public school where he can fail for free.
One would expect that the 'rehabilitation' option is there as that caveat, Relbeek. Granted, it's a fair difference between being thrown in a methadone clinic in with a psychatrist and church services, but it's nice and happily grounded in scientific principles.
Actually Ddrak, it's voluntary. He can choose the jail time if he prefers. And I'm sure he gets more than one option as far as WHICH church.
No First Amendment violation to see here, move along.
It's a 1st Amendment violation if the judge doesn't treat all religions and non-religions equally. In other words, the convicted person who gets a choice of prison or worship should be allowed to attend whatever the athiest equivalent of worship is (perhaps a library, I dunno).
In short, giving a legal alternative to one religious group over another is most definitely a violation of the first amendment.
I have no idea what is the case here and I doubt it's even been tested. It would only become an issue (in my mind) if an athiest actually asked for an equivalent non-prison alternative that didn't enforce religion on him.
Ddrak, I've seen it in practice, (insert tired speech about friend who's a judge here) and at least in Minnesota, they do offer atheists a non-worship alternative, but it comes up rarely.
A non-prison alternative is being made available to the atheist, the rehabilitation clinic. It can be likely be sufficently argued that the therapy sessions here are effectively equivalent to the pastor's lectures, therefore, the atheist is not being punished for not being religious. It follows, then, that the government is neither forcing the worship of a specific religion, nor preventing the atheist from practicing his non-religion, and thus there is no violation.
If it were a dualistic choice, the pastor or the pen, then yes, there would be a violation.
I think the key element is that the judge is not compeling anyone to take the alternative sentence. It is strictly voluntary and presumably not tied to one faith. The same is true of various drug and alcohol rehab programs that are run in religious institutions and come laden with heavy doses of Christianity. The courts have been sending people to church for years but it was to a basement filled with coffee urns and recovering drunks and drug addicts not a cathedral filled with soccer moms with their bored husbands and children. Should the judge be handcuffed from using a legitimate treatment option simply because atheists do not provide an organized alternative to what the religious organizations are offering? This would be a problem if the atheists also offered "services" and the judge refused to allow them as part of the alternative sentence. As Eidolon pointed out the atheists could always just go to a UU church if they wanted to avoid any serious discussion of religion.
It is possible that the ACLU is looking for someone with standing (druken atheist law breakers are probably not that hard to find) to fight this one but I doubt it. Seems relatively trivial in the grand scheme and hardly a slam dunk winner in the higher courts.
So, you're saying that I'm actually correct and that (as usual) Eidolon just didn't bother reading my post before firing some reply to something I never wrote?
Every single one of my comments has been that it only violates the first amendment if people are treated differently based on their religion. Eidolon was the one saying that my statement was incorrect, so I can only assume his point of view is that judges are allowed to treat someone differently based on religion, or that he just didn't bother reading my statement.
