Byron R. Johnson

This study reexamines the relevance of religiosity to the etiology of delinquency, given the inconsistent and inconclusive evidence found in the literature. Like previous researchers, the authors test whether the effects of religiosity on delinquency are spurious or completely indirect via social bonding, social learning, and sociodemographic variables. Unlike previous researchers, however, the authors (1) control for measurement errors in estimating the structural effects of religiosity on delinquency by applying a latent-variable modeling approach and (2) analyze longitudinal data collected from a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the United States. The effects of religiosity on delinquency are found independent of the theoretical and statistical controls while being partly mediated by nonreligious variables of social control and socialization. They also find some evidence of bidirectional causal relationships between religiosity and other predictors of delinquency and briefly discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

The influence of religion on delinquency has been debated for more than 30 years, and yet, there remains a lack of consensus about the nature of this relationship. In an effort to bring some clarity to this area, this study assesses the religion-delinquency literature by using a methodological approach to reviewing a body of literature that is new to the social sciences—the systematic review (SR). This SR revealed that the literature is not disparate or contradictory, as previous studies have suggested. Religious measures are generally inversely related to deviance, and this is especially true among the most rigorous studies. As criminologists continue to examine the neglected topic of religion or what has been referred to as the forgotten factor, this article is a warning that measurement issues around a complex topic like religion, or even spirituality or forgiveness, is of paramount concern. The findings further indicate that future research on delinquency may gain explanatory power by incorporating religious variables in relevant theoretical models.

The authors explored the relationship between religious involvement and intimate partner violence by analyzing data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households. They found that: (a) religious involvement is correlated with reduced levels of domestic violence; (b) levels of domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; (c) the effects of religious involvement on domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; and (d) religious involvement, specifically church attendance, protects against domestic violence, and this protective effect is stronger for African American men and women and for Hispanic men, groups that, for a variety of reasons, experience elevated risk for this type of violence.

In the mid-1990s, Prison Fellowship (PF), a nonprofit religious ministry to prisoners, commissioned a study to determine the relationship, if any, between religious programming and recidivism. Subsequent research found no difference between PF and non-PF inmates on measures of recidivism. Inmates most active in PF Bible studies, however, were significantly less likely to be arrested during a 1-year follow-up period. This study extends and improves on previous research by: (1) increasing the recidivism window from 1 to 8 years; (2) incorporating new approaches to measuring program participation; (3) including two measures of recidivism—rearrest and reincarceration; and (4) using survival analysis and proportional hazards modeling to present and analyze the data. Results from survival analyses indicate: (1) no difference in median time to rearrest or reincarceration between PF and non-PF groups throughout the 8-year study period; (2) participants with higher levels of participation in Bible studies were less likely to be rearrested at 2 and 3 years after release, though the effect diminishes over time; (3) statistical differences across groups only border significance at 2 and 3 years for reincarceration; and (4) proportional hazards modeling shows that high participation in Bible studies significantly reduces the hazard of rearrest at years 2 and 3.