Religious Identity and Perceptions of Criminal Justice Effectiveness

Abstract

Religiosity and attitudes regarding the criminal justice system have remained largely unstudied to date, despite the centrality of religion as an aspect of one's identity formation. This study tests the hypothesis that perceptions of the effectiveness of police and the courts vary according to religious identity (affiliation, membership, and self-described religiosity or spirituality). A self-administered questionnaire was completed by 342 undergraduate students in introductory social science courses at a mid-sized university in the Southeastern US. Multiple Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses were performed on predictors of two outcome variables: perceived police effectiveness and perceived court effectiveness. Results offer partial support for a religious identity-based explanation of public perceptions of criminal justice system effectiveness. Membership of a local congregation, in general, was associated with higher ratings of police and court effectiveness. In addition, African Americans rated criminal justice effectiveness lower than non-African Americans. Once interactions between race and religious identity were incorporated, race itself became non-significant for both views on court and police effectiveness. However, these results showed that among African Americans, being a congregation member significantly reduced rather than increased ratings of police effectiveness. Religion thus continues to be complex and even paradoxical in shaping perceptions in the US.

Religious perceptions of crime and implications for punitiveness

“…Additionally, fear of crime is rarely measured directly. Instead, lack of faith in the effectiveness of the criminal justice system (Johnson et al, 2018) and gun ownership (Yamane, 2016) have been used as proxies for fear of crime. One study that explicitly examined religious effects on fear of crime among a sample of West Georgia residents obtained mixed results: more frequent religious attendance was related to lower fear of property crime, but affiliation as either Protestant or Catholic (relative to no religious affiliation) was associated with higher fear of property crime (Matthews et al, 2011).…”