Serving on Sunday

"The defendant is sentenced to serve one year of Sunday church services." This, in effect, is the improbable verdict frequently handed down in a Miami court, where, for the past 18 months, Metropolitan Court Judge Thomas E. Lee has presented guilty teen-age speeders and pot smokers with the alternatives of a fine, a jail term--or a year of church services. Of the 125 teen-agers offered the choice of sermons or sentences, nearly all have decided to serve a stretch in the pews.

A deacon of Miami's First Presbyterian Church, Lee stoutly insists that there is no better rehabilitation than a stiff dose of churchgoing. To enforce his sentence, he requires each offender to write a weekly letter describing what he learned from the Sunday sermon. The effect of the preaching is sometimes questionable. One 15-year-old girl wrote what Chronicles 1:29 meant to her: "We are time watchers and punch clocks." Another boy complained: "This lesson I didn't understand at all. I did not know what he was talking about."

Although other judges are skeptical of his sentences, Lee points out that since he began the program his court has not had any repeat violators. After seven Sundays, one 17-year-old wrote that "It's kinda fun. It might help a lot of kids." Others have joined congregations, while one boy has been making a study of comparative religions by attending a different church each Sunday.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.