A new long-term study looked at how men’s religious beliefs affected their reintegration into society after they were released from prison.
The new study from researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Florida State University indicates that stable or increasing religious beliefs didn’t help men with reentry problems more than men with less religious beliefs did.
Iman Said, a doctoral candidate in sociology and criminology at Penn State, who led the study, says that for many incarcerated men, religion doesn’t play a big role in their reentry process because there are other things of higher importance, like finding and keeping jobs, getting housing, and reconnecting with family and friends.
The researchers are critical of prison-based religious programs as the only way to reduce recidivism and improve post-release success. This as they believe their findings show that religious beliefs don’t seem to be linked to recidivism.
Religion and its effect on a therapeutic community
In this study, researchers looked at long-term data from men who lived in a therapeutic community (community for individuals with substance abuse issues) in a Pennsylvania prison, as well as data from both in-prison and post-prison. They studied how religion affects people’s behavior both inside and outside of prison, how religion can help people avoid committing crimes again, and how religion can help people get around structural barriers when they get back into society. Interviews were used to find out how religious people were. They asked about how often they went to church before, during, and after prison.
The study also looked into how substance abuse affects people who have been in prison and how difficult it is for them to both reenter society and get treatment at the same time, which is important because of the prevalence of religion in recovery programs. Respondents said that many of them practiced religion on their own, with some spending time reading the Bible.
The researchers mentioned that while they did see a reduction in recidivating amongst individuals with stable or increased religious beliefs it was not statistically significant. This suggests that there is no correlation between religion and recidivism.
The research done was aided by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Justice.
