Justice Alabama Town Orders Small Time Offenders To Attend Church — Or It Will Throw Them In Jail CREDIT: 
 
 This week, the Alabama town of Bay Minette will implement a bizarre and unconstitutional way of keeping minor offenders in check — go to church or go to jail: 
 
 Operation Restore Our Community or “ROC”…begins next week. The city judge will either let misdemenor [sic] offenders work off their sentences in jail and pay a fine or go to church every Sunday for a year. If offenders elect church, they’re allowed to pick the place of worship, but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department. If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender’s case will be dismissed. 
 
 This program isn’t just unconstitutional, it is unconstitutional even under conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s vision of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. In his dissenting opinion in Lee v. Weisman, Scalia wrote that the state may not us the “threat of penalty” to “coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise.” Telling someone — even someone convicted of a crime — that they must participate in a religious service or go to jail clearly fails Justice Scalia’s test. 
 
 Indeed, as conservative law Professor Eugene Volokh points out, religiously compelled church attendance is so clearly and obviously unconstitutional, that the Mississippi Supreme Court held that a “judge’s decision to order people to attend church as a condition of bail is not just unconstitutional, but merits a 30-day suspension from the bench.” Again, this was in Mississippi. 
 
 Just across the border in Alabama, however, one town apparently thinks that the Constitution no longer applies. 

 Some criminal offenders will soon have a choice: serve time in jail or in church. 
 
 By: | 
 
 Published: September 22, 2011 
 
 Non-violent offenders in Bay Minette now have a choice some would call simple: do time behind bars or work off the sentence in church. 
 
 Operation Restore Our Community or "ROC"...begins next week. The city judge will either let misdemenor offenders work off their sentences in jail and pay a fine or go to church every Sunday for a year. 
 
 If offenders elect church, they're allowed to pick the place of worship, but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department. If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender's case will be dismissed. 
 
 Bay Minette Police Chief Mike Rowland says it costs his department about 75 bucks per inmate per day. Rowland says the ROC program will be cost-effective and could change the lives of many people heading down the wrong path. 
 
 So far, 56 churches in North Baldwin County are participating in ROC. 
 
 Rowland says the program is legal and doesn't violate separation of church and state issues because it allows the offender to choose church or jail...and the church of their choice.
– Petty offenders can choose between Jesus and jail time in Bay Minette, Alabama. The town kicked off Operation Restore Our Community this week, giving misdemeanor lawbreakers the choice between a year of church-going or fines and jail, Raw Story reports. Pastors invented the program because crime is caused by "the erosion of family values and morals," the town's police chief says. "We have children raising children and parents not instilling values in young people." Alabama's ACLU office calls the plan "blatantly unconstitutional" and is "considering options for response." A Think Progress writer notes that even conservative Justice Antonin Scalia would condemn the plan for using the threat of penalty to coerce participation in religion. But one pastor rebuffed critics, saying, "You show me somebody who falls in love with Jesus, and I'll show you a person who won't be a problem to society."