… where you go to church or you go to jail.

Or to be more accurate, where you go to church instead of jail.

The Alabama city of Bay Minette has put in place a program which allows misdemeanor offenders to choose between jail and a fine, or a year of weekly church attendance. The ROC (get it? Bit of Christian humor there.) program will purportedly achieve two things. One is a reduction in the costs associated with running the hoosegow, the other is the supposed rehabilitation of the miscreants in question. While this is all a bit of a worry and can be seen as a way of coercing people into being brainwashed into voting for the religious loons on the Right, it does do away with jail sentences for minor crims, an unexpectedly civilized step for any  country, much less the one with the highest proportion of its citizens behind bars.

Personally, I don’t care about crestfallen preachers, but I suspect these guys will be disappointed in how transient the faith of their new congregates will be. One year of  spouting pious claptrap about the Angry Old Man in the Sky, then it’s back to stealing cars while smoking dope and bargaining with the local hookers!

And check out the preacher who claims that people who “fall in love” with Jesus are a help not an injury to society! Because as we’ve seen from the crusades, to the inquisition, to George W and to Anders Breivik, if there is one factor that will prevent an individual from fucking shit up, it’s having a thing for the J-Man.

Cheech and Chong do hard time here