Is there a Correlation between views on Religion and one's Criminal Record

[truelies]

It would seem that there is no clear answer to this question in regard to the general population of the USA. Muslims would appear to form a very disportionate segment of the inmate population but that could well be related to the fact that the muslim population is largely immigrant or first generation and the social disruptions that come from such a status.
Then to those prison numbers probably contain a large number of Black American converts to islam. Taken as a whole Christian and Secular types seem to end up behind bars in rough proportion to their numbers:

Christians 65% of inmates and 76.5% of the population.
Non-Believers 11% of inmates and 14% of the population.

I would be very curious to see a correlation between intensity of Christian belief and the sort of criminal behaviours that earn a trip to prison and of course the same in regard to intensity of non-belief.

Here is an abstract of a report from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service [NCJRS] which includes statistics on the religious affiliations of US prison inmates.
Here is a summary of an NCJRS abstract re: religious affiliations of US prison inmates.

Summary of :

Questionnaires to 769 male US prison inmates ages 17-75 in 20 prisons in 12 US States.
Whites: 43%
Blacks: 42%
Hispanic: 9%
Christians: 65%, Protestants: 50%
Muslims: 9%
Total Christians and Muslims: 74%
Non-Affiliated: 15% [Non-Affiliated = Undefined, but assumed to be believers not affiliated with a specific denomination.]
Total Christians + Muslims + Non-Affiliated: 89%
Remainder: 11% [Not specified, but most likely to include nonbelievers—atheists and agnostics.]

Reference: NCJRS - National Criminal Justice Reference Service
http://www.ncjrs.org

NCJRS Abstracts Database
http://AbstractsDB.ncjrs.org/content/AbstractsDB_Results.asp?page=1



http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/key_findings.htm

Christian 159,030,000 76.5%

Muslim 1,104,000 .5%

Atheist 902,000 .4%

Agnostic 991,000 .5%

No Religion 27,496, 000 13.2%

in 2001

[xorbie]

Be ready for people to jump all over the fact that you assume everyone person who didn't put down a religion is an atheist or an agnostic.

[truelies]

Originally posted by xorbie
Be ready for people to jump all over the fact that you assume everyone person who didn't put down a religion is an atheist or an agnostic.

I made no such assumption. On the otherhand Seculars are quite willing to assume for purposes of deriving negative collerations that anyone who says they are a Christian is in fact one, no matter how little their actions reflect any underlying belief.

[wiploc]

Originally posted by truelies
On the otherhand Seculars are quite willing to assume for purposes of deriving negative collerations that anyone who says they are a Christian is in fact one, no matter how little their actions reflect any underlying belief.

How else are we to judge? Either Christians are the people who say they are Christians, or Christians are the people who have a particular relationship with the one true god. If you don't believe gods exist, you can hardly use second definition.
crc

[scigirl]

Hi truelies,

Just wanted to applaud you for the excellent title of this thread! If we do find a correlation, I hope you aren’t proposing to do an intervention study to prove the correlation means causation! Of course, if you paid me enough, I’d go to church I suppose. . . :D

You stated,
I would be very curious to see a correlation between intensity of Christian belief and the sort of criminal behaviours that earn a trip to prison and of course the same in regard to intensity of non-belief.
I think that would be an interesting study indeed. Your results are going to depend on how you define your populations. For example, if you define "Christian" as "people who regularly go to church" and "non-Christian" as "people who don't go to church at all," you may find a difference in crime between the two. However, you will have confounding factors such as income status, employment, and a very important one - age.

Another challenge you will face is to find a good outcome measure for intensity of belief and non-belief. Church-going and bible studies are easy outcomes to measure, but they may not be indicative of what’s really going on upstairs. Getting at how “intensely” someone believes may be difficult, but I think you could devise a questionnaire to get at it. Also, unlike religious folks, atheists do not often share a Sunday activity, or a book they all read every morning. So outcome measures will be tough for this group. I remember reading a study (back when I was a Christian even) that proved that scientists were all atheists. Well when you actually read their study, they were asking this question:

“Do you pray to a god for personal favors?”

Or something ridiculous like that. Even as a Christian I didn’t believe in a god that went around doing things for me. So – the study was bullshit (in my non-humble opinion.)

One idea I had to sort this out was to do a crossover study, as I proposed previously in this thread (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60071&perpage=25&pagenumber=2). What is that? A study where people switch from one group to another. So you find a group of people who used to be atheist but became Christian. And vice versa. This would perhaps control for a lot of those confounding factors, since the person in the study sort of serves as their own control. This method would also include people who were actively believing or actively disbelieving, instead of just saying they are Christian (or atheist) because that's what they were raised as. Then measure their “crime rate” or some other measure of badness.

If you want to see how not to do the study, click here. (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=59082) In that thread, there is a link to a web site from Duke that claims being a Christian is helpful for a myriad of medical conditions, and has the “science” to prove it. However, if you read the original research, you will find that the author did a curious thing: He kept changing the definition of “Christian” to fit his theory. And he only mentioned the data that supported his theory that being religious is better, but left out the data that clearly refuted it.

The actual scientific data was much less convincing. In some studies, a weekly bible study correlated with a better health outcome, whereas watching a religious program negatively correlated with health. And then another study found the direct opposite. Still other studies found that when you controlled for confounding factors, you found no difference between groups.

Paradigms that I gleaned from reading several of the papers and abstracts were the following:

1) Group-centered activities such as going to church or having a bible study were usually helpful to patients, but not usually better than other non-religious group centered activities.

2) Having a high spirituality index, which means you feel your life has meaning and purpose, also correlated well with positive health outcomes. Shocking, huh? Of course, I consider my life to have meaning and purpose, so even as an atheist I would have a high spirituality index. Hardly proof that Christianity specifically is good for the “soul.” ;)

Anyway, there’s my 2 cents.

scigirl

[truelies]

Scigirl

I think you have demonstrated how very difficult it would be to produce a Study (though I suppose some grad student could have a lot of fun with it) along the lines my Topic Title suggested. My gut feel is that within our Culture the average behaviours in regard to lawabiddingness among the hardcore Seculars and Devout Christians is not drastically different assuming similar age, income, social status.

We are for the most part a product of our genes and our experiences so I should not be surprised by an atheist with a sound body and an untraumatised childhood who has every appearance of being a better kinder person than a Christian who has none of these or vice versa. My own religion teaches that I have no way of REALLY knowing if those around me on Sunday morning are wheat or tares in God's eyes. There will always be some of each. The Word does teach that from whatever base a person starts at True Faith will make them a better though never perfect person in this file. But even this is not intented as a tool to measure one person against another but for the individuak to weigh themselves on God's scale.

IMHO, there are enough obvious ills in the world that are visible to both camps and enough common humanity in both that time and resources might best be spent on devising solutions rather than thumping the tub about who is'best'. Both sides have their share of saints and assh**les. But what do I know.

[Philosoft]

Originally posted by truelies
I made no such assumption.
You cannot deny this is an assumption:Non-Believers 11% of inmates and 14% of the population.Because "remainder" indictates that "non-belief" was not explicitly an option of the survey. You cannot therefore assume that the entire 11% covered by "remainder" contains solely "non-belief."