Religion,Delinquency,and Drug Use

Abstract

Contemporary research on adolescent involvement in religion and delinquency is generally traced to Hirschi and Stark’s 1969 study, titled “Hellfire and Delinquency.” Their study surprised many by reporting no significant relationship between religious involvement and delinquency. Subsequent replications provided mixed results, but multiple reviews, both traditional and systematic, found religious involvement to be inversely related to delinquency. However, meta-analysis of the relationship remains scant with only three studies published to date. To address this research need, we conducted a meta-analysis of 62 relevant studies over four decades, which provided 145 effect sizes from 193,656 adolescents. We examined six bivariate correlations between two, attitudinal and behavioral, measures of religious involvement (religiosity and church attendance) and three indicators of delinquent behavior (alcohol use, illicit drug use, and nondrug delinquency). Our meta-analysis results indicated an inverse relationship among all correlations (range: −.16 to −.22). Stated differently, the results of this meta-analysis confirmed that religious involvement is negatively related to delinquent behaviors, regardless of measurement characteristics. The implications of this finding for future research on religion and delinquency are discussed.

Keywords

delinquency alcohol use drug use religion meta-analysis

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Baier

C. J.

Wright

B. E.

(2001). If you love me, keep my commandments: A meta-analysis of the effect of religion on crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38, 3–21.

Borenstein

Hedges

Higgins

Rothstein

(2005). Comprehensive meta-analysis version 2. Englewood, NJ: Biostat.

Chitwood

Weiss

M. L.

Leukefeld

C. G.

(2008). A systematic review of recent literature on religiosity and substance use. Journal of Drug Issues, 38, 653–688.

Cochran

J. K.

Akers

R. L.

(1989). Beyond hellfire: An exploration of the variable effects of religiosity on adolescent marijuana and alcohol use. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 26, 198–225.

Cooper

(2009). Research synthesis and meta-analysis: A step-by-step approach (4th ed.). Las Angeles, CA: Sage.

Cullen

F. T.

(2010). Toward a criminology of religion: Comment on Johnson and Jang. In Rosenfeld

Quinet

Garcia

(Eds.), Contemporary issues in criminological theory and research: The role of social institutions (pp. 151–161). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Dew

R. E.

Daniel

S. S.

Armstrong

T. D.

Goldston

D. B.

Triplett

M. F.

Koenig

H. G.

(2008). Religion/spirituality and adolescent psychiatric symptoms: A review. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 39, 381–398.

Duval

Tweedie

(2000). Trim and fill: A simple funnel-plot-based method of testing and adjusting for publication bias in meta-analysis. Biometrics, 56, 455–463.

Ellis

(1987). Religiosity and criminality from the perspective of arousal theory. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 24, 215–232.

10.

Evans

T. D.

Cullen

F. T.

Dunaway

R. G.

Burton

V. S.

(1995). Religion and crime reexamined: The impact of religion, secular controls, and social ecology on adult criminality. Criminology, 33, 195–224.

11.

Freeman

R. B.

(1986). Who escapes? The relation of churchgoing and other background factors to the socioeconomic performance of black male youths from inner-city tracts. In Freeman

R. B.

Holzer

H. J.

(Eds.), The black youth employment crisis (pp. 353–376). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

12.

Hawkins

J. D.

Jenson

J. M.

Catalano

R. F.

Lishner

D. M.

(1988). Delinquency and drug abuse: Implications for social services. The Social Service Review, 62, 258–284.

13.

Hedges

L. V.

Olkin

(1985). Statistical methods for meta-analysis. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

14.

Higgins

P. C.

Thompson

S. G.

Deeks

J. J.

Altman

D. G.

(2003). Measuring inconsistency in meta-analyses. British Medical Journal, 327, 557–560.

15.

Hunter

H. E.

Schmidt

F. L.

(2004). Methods of meta-analysis: Correcting error and bias in research findings (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

16.

Jang

S. J.

(2013). Religion and crime. In Wright

(Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-9780195396607-0177.xml?rskey=f0JmBc

17.

Jang

S. J.

Bader

Johnson

(2008). The cumulative advantage of religiosity in preventing drug use. Journal of Drug Issues, 38, 771–798.

18.

Jang

S. J.

Johnson

B. R.

(2001). Neighborhood disorder, individual religiosity, and adolescent use of illicit drugs: A test of multilevel hypotheses. Criminology, 39, 109–144.

19.

Jang

S. J.

Johnson

B. R.

(2003). Strain, negative emotions, and deviant coping among African Americans: A test of general strain theory. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 19, 79–105.

20.

Jensen

Erickson

M. L.

(1979). The religious factor and delinquency: Another look at the hellfire hypotheses. In Wuthnow

(Ed.), The religious dimension (pp. 157–178). New York, NY: Academic Press.

21.

Johnson

B. R.

(2001). The role African American churches in reducing crime among black youth. Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR Research Report), Baylor University. Retrieved from http://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/ISR_Role_African_American.pdf/

22.

Johnson

B. R.

Jang

S. J.

(2010). Crime and religion: Assessing the role of the faith factor. In Rosenfeld

Quinet

Garcia

(Eds.), Contemporary issues in criminological theory and research: The role of social institutions (pp. 117–149). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

23.

Johnson

B. R.

Larson

D. B.

De Li

Jang

S. J.

(2000a). Escaping from the crime of inner cities: Church attendance and religious salience among disadvantaged youth. Justice Quarterly, 17, 377–391.

24.

Johnson

B. R.

De Li

Larson

D. B.

McCullough

M. E.

(2000b). Religion and delinquency: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 16, 32–52.

25.

Johnson

B. R.

Siegel

M. V.

(2008). The great escape: How religion alters the delinquent behavior of high-risk adolescents. ISR Report, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University. Retrieved from http://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/ISR_Great_Escape.pdf

26.

Johnson

B. R.

Thompkins

R. B.

Webb

(2002). Objective hope—Assessing the effectiveness of faith-based organizations: A review of the literature. ISR Report, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University. Retrieved from http://www.baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/ISR_Objective_Hope.pdf

27.

Knudten

R. D.

Knudten

M. S.

(1971). Juvenile delinquency, crime and religion. Review of Religious Research, 12, 130–152.

28.

Koenig

H. G.

King

D. E.

Carson

V. B.

(2012). Handbook of religion and health (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

29.

Koenig

H. G.

McCullough

M. E.

Larson

D. B.

(2001). Handbook of religion and health. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

30.

Lipsey

M. W.

Wilson

D. B.

(2001). Practical meta-analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

31.

Pigott

(2012). Advances in meta-analysis. Statistics for social and behavioral sciences. New York, NY: Springer.

32.

Pigott

T. D.

Williams

Polanin

Wu-Bohannon

M. J.

(2012). A re-examination of the education production function using individual participant data. Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED519117.pdf

33.

Polanin

J. R.

Pigott

T. D.

(2014). The use of meta-analytic statistical significance testing. Research Synthesis Methods. doi:10.1002/jrsm.1124

34.

Regnerus

M. D.

(2003). Religion and positive adolescent outcomes: A review of research and theory. Review of Religious Research, 44, 394–413.

35.

Regnerus

M. D.

(2006). Adolescent delinquency. In Ebaugh

H. R.

(Ed.), Handbook of religion and social institutions (pp. 265–282). New York, NY: Springer.

36.

Rosenthal

(1991). Meta-analytic procedures for social research (Rev. ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

37.

Rothstein

H. R.

Sutton

A. J.

Borenstein

M. J.

(2006). Publication bias in meta-analysis, Chapter 1. In Rothstein

H. R.

Sutton

A. J.

Borenstein

(Eds.), Publication bias in meta-analysis: Prevention, assessment and adjustments (pp. 1–7). Chichester, England: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

38.

Shadish

W. R.

Haddock

C. K.

(2009). Combining estimates of effect size. The Handbook of Research Syntheses and Meta-analysis, 2, 257–277.

39.

Smith

(2003). Theorizing religious effects among American adolescents. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42, 17–30.

40.

Stark

(1984). Religion and conformity: Reaffirming a sociology of religion. Sociological Analysis, 45, 273–282.

41.

Stark

(1996). Religion as context: Hellfire and delinquency one more time. Sociology of Religion, 57, 163–173.

42.

Tittle

C. R.

Welch

M. R.

(1982). Religiosity and deviance: Toward a contingency theory of constraining effects. Social Forces, 61, 653–682.

43.

Viechtbauer

(2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. Journal of Statistical Software, 36, 1–48.

44.

Yeung

J. W.

Chan

Y. C.

Lee

B. L.

(2009). Youth religiosity and substance use: A meta-analysis from 1995 to 2007. Psychological Reports, 105, 255–266.

45.

Yonker

J. E.

Schnabelrauch

C. A.

DeHaan

L. G.

(2012). The relationship between spirituality and religiosity on psychological outcomes in adolescents and emerging adults: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Adolescence, 35, 299–314.