IN THE PEW INSTEAD OF PRISON

One Study Showed That Going To Church Is Associated With Substantial
Differences In How Young Men Behave.

This book has two messages. First, religion reduces crime. Second,
look what happens to scholars who say this is true.

The first argument rests on the work of Byron R. Johnson, a professor
at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, who compiled a survey of every
study between 1944 and 2010 that measured the possible effect of
religion on crime. He found 273 such studies. As he reports in "More
God, Less Crime," even though their authors used different methods and
assessed different groups of people, 90% of these studies found that
more religiosity resulted in less crime. Only 2% found that religion
produced more crime. (The remaining 8% found no relationship either
way.)

Does this prove that religion reduces crime? Not precisely, for these
are all quasi-experimental studies. If they were truly experimental
and thus carried greater intellectual weight, the researchers would
direct people, none of whom had any religion, either to acquire and
practice one or to remain godless and thereby stay in the control
group. We would then compare the groups' crime rates. Doing this would
be immoral, illegal and impractical, and so we are left with studies
that compare religious and nonreligious people and try to control
statistically for other factors that might explain away the
religion-and-crime link.

How much confidence, then, should we have in nonexperimental studies?
Not a lot, as none of the studies that Mr. Johnson cites show the
statistical controls necessary to evaluate them. But offsetting this
weakness is the number of studies showing a religious effect. And we
can look at a few of the best ones, such as that by Richard Freeman. A
Harvard professor of economics, he arranged for 2,358 young black men
living in downtown Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia to be interviewed.
He found that, other things (such as family and economic background)
being equal, going to church is associated with substantial
differences in how young men behave. More churchgoing, less crime,
less alcohol and fewer drugs. As Mr. Freeman puts it: "The effect of
churchgoing is not the result of churchgoing youth having 'good
attitudes.' " If you want to see his reasons, look at his book "The
Black Youth Employment Crisis" (1986).

The interesting question is whether society can make religion more
important in the lives of convicted offenders. The largest effort to
do this is managed by the Prison Fellowship, an organization created
by Charles Colson in the 1970s when he was in jail after having
pleaded guilty to charges involving his role in the Nixon
administration's effort to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon
Papers leaker.

Evaluating the Prison Fellowship program is not easy. Inmates,
according to the organization, must complete all three phases of its
program in order to benefit. Phase one involves Bible study while in
prison; phase two requires community service during the day at a
nearby city; and phase three means linking up with mentors and
churches in the community. Each phase lasts about a year.

Mr. Johnson looked at the program's effectiveness in Texas and found
that those who completed all three phases were much less likely to be
arrested or incarcerated for a new crime than those who dropped out.
The key question is whether the inmates who go through all three
phases differ in other ways from those who never join the program or
drop out early.

In an earlier study of inmates at four New York prisons, Mr. Johnson
says, there was no difference between Fellowship and non-Fellowship
groups over an eight-year period except for those members of the
program who worked hard at Bible studies. Even then, the effect lasted
for only two or three years after their release.

But these findings do not fully address a problem that social
scientists call "selection bias." If people who join a long program
and stay with it are different in motivation from those who drop out,
we cannot be sure that Bible study makes a difference. The
selection-bias problem, I suspect, afflicts many of the studies that
Mr. Johnson summarizes. The strongest results come from studies (there
are a few) that compare people in the Prison Fellowship with those who
volunteered for it but weren't selected.

The second story that Mr. Johnson has to tell in "More God, Less
Crime" is about what happens to academics-in his case, a
criminologist-who turn their attention to religion. When he was a
young scholar at Memphis State University (now the University of
Memphis) in the mid-1980s, Mr. Johnson was told by his department
chairman that none of his articles involving religion would count
toward getting tenure. Though Mr. Johnson began publishing articles in
academic journals about subjects other than religion, two years later
he was fired. In his appeal to the dean, Mr. Johnson mentioned his
publications and high student evaluations. The dean replied: "I don't
need to have a reason," adding: "I can let you go if I don't like the
color of your eyes."

With three small children at home, Mr. Johnson was desperate to save
his job. He appealed to the provost, who told him: "You simply don't
fit in here. I think you need to consider getting a job teaching at
some small Christian college." The provost added, according to Mr.
Johnson, that he would have "the same problem" at any other state
university. Mr. Johnson then said to the provost: "If I were a Marxist
we wouldn't even be having this conversation, would we?" The provost
"nodded in agreement."

Mr. Johnson moved on to the University of Pennsylvania, where in the
1990s he continued to publish material on religion (even though the
school is funded in large part by the state). In 2004, he took a job
at Baylor University, a private Baptist institution, where he has been
quite successful. His advice to young scholars: Get tenure before you
start writing about religion.

Mr. Wilson is the author of "Thinking About Crime" and "The Moral
Sense," among many other books.