Serve Time In Jail...Or In Church?Follow

While I agree that community service will be better rehabilitation than sitting in a jail cell, I also suspect there's a bit of selection bias in that statistic. Consider who is allowed to do community service and who isn't.

No. I didn't. I made an equivalence between religion and cleaning trash on the side of the road with regard to the degree to which they had "nothing to do with their propensity to break the law".



More or less so than cleaning trash on the side of the road?

That's hard to equate to a firm position about the effect of religion on crime though. What you could be measuring more is someone's sense of choosing a life path rather than following one set out for him already. In the US, most people start with some sort of religious upbringing. That's their default condition and unless they choose something else, that's what they'll be listed as in most statistics. Someone who is an atheist or agnostic likely made a choice at some point.

It would be more fair to compare those groups with those who choose to be active in their church rather than just attend periodically because that's what they were taught to do. Both of those represent choices with regard to someones beliefs and presumably will also be correlated to a lower likelihood to commit crimes (cause they're thinking about how to be part of society rather than not).

Obviously, this is nearly impossible to do. I just point it out because it does automatically grant a significant statistical skew in favor of atheists and agnostics which may have nothing to do with their specific faith choices, but rather the fact that they made one in the first place.



Sure. But you could say that about anything. If you don't take yoga seriously, it's not going to benefit you either. IMO, that's a somewhat meaningless observation. Those who do adopt a system of moral standards, regardless of what that system is (mostly!), and who commit themselves to it, will tend to be more likely to act in ways beneficial to the society around them than harmful. The fact that not everyone exposed to religion is going to take it to heart and change themselves as a result doesn't mean that it's a pointless pursuit.


We could alternatively expose prisoners to a variety of secular philosophies on ethics and societal norms and whatnot, and the result (those who adopt them) will be similar. The question is whether more people exposed to such things will adopt them or not. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that more people will be influenced by religion than by secular ethical arguments. Just a guess though. I could be wrong!

Edited, Sep 27th 2011 5:39pm by gbaji

Actually I think that it is a huge point, in that telling someone to go to church instead of prison is as effective as telling someone to do yoga instead of prison. And before you get all rabble rabble I said religion has a greater chance to influence, note that the only real difference between anything spiritual (like yoga, or the ***** I take in the morning, or even "cults") and things defined as religion is the number of people subscribed to that brand of invisible watching eye and spanking hand.

The choice is stupidly easy for offenders, and the only reason it is an option is because church is leaking out of the box we are supposed to keep it in when dealing with matters of law.






Edited, Sep 28th 2011 4:03am by Tarub

Because the only option is Christian. I'd like to see you argue for this should a Muslim want to go to their Mosque instead of jail for illegal weapons possession.

And if you allow Christians to do so, defacto, you gotta give the other religions their choice too.

Neither can, but at least cleaning trash is overall more productive.

And just one other reason why Alma is one of the stupidest people on the planet.

So you admit that going to church is like punishment?

I don't believe you. I'm going to have to consult Jenny McCarthy on this.

Shut up. Homeopathy cured my dehydration.

I was in class you bastards.

Yeah. I don't think anyone specified that this can only be a Christian church. I think the point that's being lost here is that this is a policy being enacted in one small town. It doesn't affect anyone outside that town. The only issue is how this policy might be implemented (or not!) elsewhere. I'd assume that any organization meeting the standard filing classification for "churches" would qualify.