Barry A. Hazle Jr.
Posted on 04/17/2010 8:48:09 PM PDT by SmithL
Barry A. Hazle Jr. served a year in prison on a drug charge. After he got out, his parole agent sent him back for being an atheist.
Now, the 41-year-old Redding computer technician has won a ruling from a Sacramento federal judge against the state and stands to collect damages for having his constitutional rights violated.
Even before U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. decided in his favor last week, California corrections officials had issued a new policy protecting the rights of atheist parolees.
"This has been a long and painful process for me," Hazle said in a statement through his attorney this week. "The judge's ruling can't give me back my lost freedom, but it begins to restore my faith in our judicial system."
Hazle's fight with the state over religion began Feb. 27, 2007, when he was paroled from the California Rehabilitation Center, Norco, where he did a year for drug possession.
As a condition of his release, Hazle was ordered to attend a 90-day, inpatient drug treatment program. He agreed to the program but even before his release told prison officials he wanted to be sent to a "treatment facility that did not contain religious components," federal court papers state.
Instead, he was assigned to the Empire Recovery Center in Redding, a 12-step program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous and featuring a strong religious overtone, utilizing references to God and "a higher power."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
I would think that even believers would be alarmed by this intrusion of government in personal religious decisions.
The judge had a point. If I had to go through counseling, I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be obliged to be under the sway of a Muslim counselor, who would let me go if I banged my head on the floor a few dozen times and shouted “Allah Akbar!”, or send me back to jail if I refused.
And the way things are going, you know that is going to happen—or worse. A lot of these counselors have “control issues”, which can be a major problem if they have you on a leash. I can rightly imagine several Christians I know having fantods as soon as one such counselor decided to pull some New Age bulldada on them.
Heck, I know one woman who was so disgusted with a counselor that she and her husband gave up their US citizens and migrated to New Zealand. He seemed to think that he was a counselor “with benefits”, and that turned into a he said-she said ugly court fight.
No, I think the judge had a point.
program based on Alcoholics Anonymous. Almost ALL rehab programs are based on the 12 steps, because it works better than any other program before or since.
Yes.. it mentions GOD, or a HIGHER POWER. It is so far from a Religious Organization.
Good Luck Mr. Hazle with your quest.. but be forewarned.. you’ll probably die with a needle in your arm.
Occupation: Loser
I agree. now I wouldn’t automatically exclude this program because it was run by a religious group or even that program had religious elements but being forced to talk about or participate in a religious exercise is over the line.
I’m an atheist as well so I understand where the guy is coming from (not that I would ever be in his situation). Christians should imagine themselves forced to participate in a Muslim prayer group for comparison.
Some AA programs push a strong God/religious emphasis. Someone I know went to an AA meeting that had a number of athiests or aganostics. At that meeting little was mentioned about God, but people were told they could use their sponsor or some other healthy respected person as their “higher power.” The 12 steps themselves do not have to be religious in emphasis. They include things like making a fearless moral inventory of your past mistakes. This could certainly be given a God/sin emphasis in biased hands. Also helping other addicts.
My atheist acquaintenance was much helped by the program.
I agree. I live in Boston/Cambridge and am surrounded by religion-hating (well, Christian-hating, they get all warm and fuzzy when you talk about Islam...hmmm, wonder why?) atheists who freak out over this subject. Yet when I worked in a homeless shelter, it was amazing how I was always siding with and made a part of the Christian contingent, while the other atheist/liberals were abusing the clients.
Christians should imagine themselves forced to participate in a Muslim prayer group for comparison.
I almost put that idea in my initial post! :)
People in this situation should have their atheism respected as any religion's adherent's would have his or her religion respected. That's all, it's not about destroying religion or making atheism the official non-religion or whatever. It seems to be a very conservative position.
Have to agree with the ruling here... you cannot force someone to submit to religious beliefs with which he does not agree.
If the courts give him a big chunk of taxpayer money he will just use it to pay for his next drug deal. This scumbag is not a victim, his rights were not violated. He is just one more sleazy punk who has learned to take advantage of the screwed up system.
**My atheist acquaintenance was much helped by the program.**
Some meetings do things a little differently but it’s all pretty much the same. Some more God than others, others sound like therapy sessions.
I’ve been clean/sober for 31 years now... and My experience shows that.. Mr. Hazle’s chances are not good. His refusal to give it a chance may have doomed him.
There's no indication that Mr. Hazel was a drug dealer -- that's just your own prejudice talking. According to this article he was originally convicted of methamphetamine possession. He was a user, not a dealer.
Then Mr. Hazel was sent to prison in violation of California's Proposition 36, which requires that drug users be allowed to enter a rehabilitation program. Officers arrested him after finding him in possession of an unopened bottle of whiskey (see article for more details). Since then the State Court of Appeals has vindicated him, saying he shouldn't have gone to prison in the first place.
Mr. Hazel's rights were violated multiple times, and it sounds like he definitely deserves to win a large chunk of money in his lawsuit against the government. Do taxpayers deserve to have to pay out that money? The only taxpayers who deserve it are the ones who support the War On Drugs, with all the abuses that the WOD entails.
In other words, you deserve to pay out your taxpayer dollars to Mr. Hazel, but I don't.
The US Constitution renders your quest vain.
Rational Recovery is a program for atheists. This could have been offered as an alternative.
I've been there, on a voluntary basis, and also to AA due to a DUI conviction years earlier. Neither made me want to stop drinking. Later, I quit on my own, with no withdrawals or any symptoms or problems, when I myself decided I'd had enough.
AA is so self-righteous. Not true of RR.
That's quite some "detective" work on your part. Fortunately my employer, who just raised my pay to $140k, fails to share your viewpoint.
You and your meth friends make me sick.
For your sake I urge you to get treatment before Obamacare kicks in, whether your sickness be physical or mental or both.
I have seen the damage they do and it would be my pleasure if I ever come into contact with you to teach you some respect for the laws of our land and let you spend some time in a state facility where you can spend lots of time hanging out with meth users and other drug taking slimeballs.
I foresee a pleasure-less future for you.
Apparently the terms of this guy's original probation required that he remain drug/alcohol free for the period of his probation. That didn't work for Mr. Hazel. A term in prison for many addicts is the best rehabilitation program they can experience because its stark reality ends their denial and forces them into hard choices.
AA is legally and medically defined as a “religious” course of treatment because the terms “God” and “higher power” are used in its therapy and literature. However, AA stresses that the meaning of these terms is totally subjective and that “God” can be any entity the individual chooses from Jesus Christ to Yahweh or Allah, to a group of people, a garden gnome or a door knob.
Alcoholics and drug addicts are egocentric. The exercise of seeking a “higher power” outside themselves helps them move from an ego centered world, where the addict is God, to a community centered world where recovery is possible through the interaction with others.
California is not the Bible Belt. The success of AA, NA and more secular therapies, that rely on spiritual exercises as a path to recovery, is the likely benchmark used by the department of corrections.
Untreated drunks, junkies, meth-heads, etc. will always lay the blame for their pathological behavior on everyone and everything but themselves.
http://www.redding.com/news/2008/sep/29/redding-many-sues-state-over-religious-drug-treatm/
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