Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Epiphenom

Home
About

Home
Nonreligious
Be religious and be free (or at least, let off with a lighter sentence)

Be religious and be free (or at least, let off with a lighter sentence)

Last updated on: November 12, 2014 at 5:21 am by Epiphenom

Be religious and be free (or at least, let off with a lighter sentence) 2014-11-12T05:21:17+01:00 Epiphenom

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Cherie Booth was in the news this week for giving a suspended prison sentence to a man who broke another guy’s jaw in an assault, apparently on the grounds that he was religious. Here’s the offending quote:

“I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before,” she told him at Inner London Crown Court.

“You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank. You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”

Now, what a judge should say in these circumstances is that the defendant is a man of good character. By switching that for the term ‘religious’ she’s implying that the two are synonymous, and that, by implication, non-religious people are not.

So it was a verbal gaffe. But it got me thinking: perhaps she’s on to something. Is religion an indicator of good behaviour?

Let’s start with prison populations. In the UK, as in the US, there are very few atheists in prison. But what there are is a lot of ‘non-religious’ or ‘don’t knows’.

In other words, this seems like a classic case of the ‘U-shape’, where firm atheists and firm religious are unlikely to be offenders. The problem lies with the people in the middle.

So what about some proper social science then? Well, there’s a lot of it out there, but not a lot of it is very convincing.

There really isn’t anything to link religiosity in an individual to risk for crime. What there is tends to look at the population level, and try to figure out if areas with more religious people have fewer crimes (after adjusting for other factors).

Overall, religious attendance seems to be associated on a population level with less property crime. But the evidence is pretty mixed. What’s more the evidence is correlational, which leads to the question of causality.

In the only study to date that seems to have tackled this, Paul Heaton of the University of Chicago looked at US counties. He found that, sure enough, there was a small effect: more religious counties had fewer property crimes (although there was no difference in violent crimes).

So then he looked to see what the relationship was between crime today and religiosity back in 1916. What he found was that the counties with more crime today had seen a relatively larger drop in numbers of religious people.

What this suggests is that high crime rates actually cause a decrease in religiosity. Why this should be is an open question.

It doesn’t seem to be that pro-social people move away from areas of high criminality. When he looked only at counties where the population is relatively static, he found something similar.

He also looked at the effect of Easter, a point in the calendar when Church attendance goes up. There was no effect of this on crime rates, which supports the idea that suffusing the population with religious messages doesn’t help to reduce crime.

This is by no means the end of the story. But it does give a flavour of just how uncertain the social effects of religion still are.

And of course none of it supports Booth’s apparent belief that religious people deserve lighter sentences!

Heaton, P. (2006). Does Religion Really Reduce Crime?* The Journal of Law and Economics, 49 (1), 147-172 DOI: 10.1086/501087

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

February 5, 2010

Does prayer make you more forgiving... and why?

Next Post

February 11, 2010 The brain surgery path to transcendence

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Causes of religion - evolution Causes of religion - psychological Causes of religion - social Demographics Digest Effects of religion - health Effects of religion - psychological Effects of religion - social Notifications Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A horse A donkey A camel A chariot