legitimate faith-based initiatives

Found the oxymoron.

I think the point is that you can recheck it weekly if you want to see how much it changed.

But instead we just lock up the criminal, because it’s cheaper.

Except, in the long run, it’s not. It’s only cheaper within the scope of one or two election cycles. Over the long haul, weighing the costs and economic benefits of making person a productive member of society again, it’s way cheaper to do that. But nobody ever won an election promising to spend more money now so that we don’t have to spend nearly as much in a few decades.