Spirituality is a component of many drug and alcohol treatment strategies, and faith-based programming is also common within prison settings. Yet research on religiosity—crime linkages has often relied on general youth or adult samples or has included a short time line for gauging positive effects. Life-course researchers focused on serious delinquents, in turn, have often emphasized other factors associated with long-term crime patterns, such as marital attachment and job stability, or the criminality of the individual's social ties. This study draws on quantitative and qualitative data derived from a long-term follow-up of a sample of serious adolescent male and female offenders to explore the role of spirituality and religious participation as influences on adult patterns of criminal involvement (N= 152). The respondents were first interviewed as adolescents, in 1982, and again as adults in 1995 and 2003. Results of longitudinal analyses that take into account self-report and incarceration histories at both time periods do not reveal a significant association between these indices of religiosity and the likelihood of evidencing a pattern of sustained desistance. Our analysis of indepth life-history interviews conducted with most respondents over these two time periods and 41 additional interviews focused specifically on spirituality and religion are used to explore in more detail the promise and challenges associated with relying on religiosity as a catalyst for sustained behavior change.

https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/center-for-family-and-demographic-research/documents/working-papers/2007/CFDR-Working-Papers-2007-07-A-Life-Course-Perspective-on-Spirituality-and-Desistance-from-Crime.pdf

A life-course perspective on spirituality and desistance from crime

American Criminal Justice Policy examines many of the most prominent criminal justice policies on the American landscape and finds that they fall well short of achieving the accountability and effectiveness that policymakers have advocated and that the public expects. The policies include mass incarceration, sex offender laws, supermax prisons, faith-based prisoner reentry programs, transfer of juveniles to adult court, domestic violence mandatory arrest laws, drug courts, gun laws, community policing, private prisons, and others. Optimistically, Daniel P. Mears argues that this situation can be changed through systematic incorporation of evaluation research into policy development, monitoring, and assessment. To this end, the book provides a clear and accessible discussion of five types of evaluation - needs, theory, implementation or process, outcome and impact, and cost-efficiency. It identifies how these can be used both to hold the criminal justice system accountable and to increase the effectiveness of crime control and crime prevention efforts.

American Criminal Justice Policy: An Evaluation Approach to Increasing Accountability and Effectiveness

The effect of faith program participation on prison misconduct: The Life Connections Program

Religion and Crime: A Systematic Review and Assessment of Next Steps

Objective:Research on the relationship between religion and criminal recidivism has produced encouraging but ultimately inconclusive findings. This study offers a new direction for studying the role of religious support in reentry, providing a longitudinal analysis of the effect of change in religious support on both crime and noncrime outcomes postrelease.Methods:Employing mixed-effects longitudinal analyses, this study uses data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative to examine the impact of religious support on postrelease substance use, criminal recidivism, and employment.Results:Religious support had strong and robust prosocial effects on both postrelease employment and substance use. The relationship between religious support and recidivism, however, did not reach statistical significance when we added social support to the research model.Conclusion:Religious support and meaning making seems to help people address their criminogenic needs and also seems to be an important responsiv...

The Role of Religious Support in Reentry Evidence from the SVORI Data

Research Summary:

The current research investigates the faith, sociodemographic, psychological, and criminal history factors associated with the decision to volunteer for a faith-based program. Operational records were combined with data collected from self-administered surveys. The results of the logistic regression model were successful in identifying factors related to program participation, including factors not included in previous studies. The findings suggest that program participants are motivated to make changes in their lives and are seeking their way in a religious sense. For example, program participants scored higher on average on the motivation for change scale used here, had higher rates of attendance in religious services since incarceration, and were more active in reading sacred scripture. Conversely, inmates who claimed higher levels of knowledge about their faith were less likely to participate in the Life Connections Program examined here.



Policy Implications:

The results of the analysis suggest that certain religious characteristics are associated with participation in a faith-based program. The implication is that religious program providers need to pay attention to the match between the program content and the charactertistics of their potential program participants. The results also demonstrate the need to capture differences between participants and comparison subjects on dimensions not usually included in evaluations of faith-based programs. Without knowledge of the selection process, there is no way to determine whether observed differences between program participants and “comparisons” are due to actual program effects or are an artifact of preexisting differences between the groups.

An exploration into participation in a faith‐based prison program*

/pdf/an-exploration-into-participation-in-a-faith-based-prison-2ifopixhe5.pdf

An Exploration into Participation in a Faith-Based Prison Program: The Bureau of Prisons and the Life Connections Program

This cross-sectional study evaluates the temporal trends in suicide methods among US adolescents, with variation by sex and race.

/pdf/temporal-trends-in-suicide-methods-among-adolescents-in-the-22yl1d4z.pdf

Temporal Trends in Suicide Methods Among Adolescents in the US

Simultaneous alcohol and marijuana (SAM) use is associated with adverse consequences for youth. While SAM use is overall declining among youth, prior studies indicate increasing marijuana use among US adolescents who ever used cigarettes, suggesting possible moderation of the alcohol-marijuana relationship by cigarette use.We included 43,845 12-th grade students participating in Monitoring the Future data (2000-2020). A 5-level alcohol/marijuana measure was used, including past-year SAM, alcohol-only, marijuana-only, non-simultaneous alcohol and marijuana, or no use. Multinomial logistic regressions estimated associations between time periods (categorized based on sample size: 2000-2005, 2006-2009, 2010-2014, 2015-2020) and the 5-level alcohol/marijuana measure. Models adjusted for sex, race, parental education and survey mode and included interactions of time periods and lifetime cigarette or vaped nicotine use.While overall SAM among 12th graders decreased from 23.65% to 18.31% between 2000 and 2020, SAM increased among students who never used cigarettes or vaped nicotine (from 5.42% to 7.03%). Among students who ever used cigarettes or vaped nicotine, SAM increased from 39.2% in 2000-2005-44.1% in 2010-2014 then declined to 37.8% in 2015-2020. Adjusted models controlling for demographics indicated that among students with no lifetime cigarette or vaped nicotine use, students in 2015-2020 had 1.40 (95% C.I. 1.15-1.71) times the odds of SAM, and 5.43 (95% C.I. 3.63-8.12) times the odds of marijuana-only (i.e., no alcohol use) compared to students who used neither in 2000-2005. Alcohol-only declined over time in both students who ever and never used cigarettes or nicotine vape products.Paradoxically, while SAM declined in the overall adolescent US population, the prevalence of SAM increased among students who have never smoked cigarettes or vaped nicotine. This effect arises because of a substantial decline in the prevalence of cigarette smoking; smoking is a risk factor for SAM, and fewer students smoke. Increases in vaping are offsetting these changes, however. Preventing adolescent use of cigarettes and nicotine vaped products could have extended benefits for other substance use, including SAM. 

Victoria Andrea Joseph

Papers

An exploration into participation in a faith‐based prison program*

An Exploration into Participation in a Faith-Based Prison Program: The Bureau of Prisons and the Life Connections Program

Temporal Trends in Suicide Methods Among Adolescents in the US

Adolescent simultaneous use of alcohol and marijuana by trends in cigarette and nicotine vaping from 2000 to 2020.

What Is Not Measured Cannot Be Counted: Sample Characteristics Reported in Studies of Hippocampal Volume and Depression in Neuroimaging Studies.