Forgiveness and Fundamentalism: Reconsidering the Relationship Between Correctional Attitudes and Religion*

Abstract

Although research typically has failed to establish a relationship between religious affiliation and correctional attitudes, recent assessments have revealed that fundamentalist Christians tend to be more punitive than are nonfundamentalists. These studies have advanced our understanding considerably, but their conceptualization of religion and correctional attitudes has been limited. Using a statewide survey, the present study demonstrates that compassionate as well as fundamentalist aspects of religious beliefs are related to public correctional preferences. Further, our results reveal that religion influences support for rehabilitation as well as punitiveness. These findings suggest the need for scholars to think more broadly about the role of religion in criminology.David Garland (1990:203) recently observed that "throughout the history of penal practice religion has been a major force in shaping the ways in which offenders are dealt with." Despite this long tradition, little research has seriously explored the relationship between religious views and correctional attitudes. Most of the research that has been conducted on public attitudes toward justice policies either failed to consider religion altogether or divided respondents into broad categories of affiliation, typically producing null relationships. In contrast, a handful of recent studies have examined the issue more closely, revealing greater punitiveness ~~

Simultaneous prediction of punitive and rehabilitation-oriented attitudes towards probation

“…Applegate et al (2000) showed that when forgiving attitudes are measured beside punitive attitudes, the forgiving attitudes will prevail. Our study confirms this result in the sense that the factor analysis showed that rehabilitation-oriented attitudes explain more variance than punitive attitudes.…”

Religiosity, Spirituality, and Substance Abuse

“…The GSS consisted of a full national probability sample . Some of the noted benefits of the 2004 survey were a larger sample size than previous surveys, more economic and racial diversity within the sample, and a wider variety of religious and spiritual measures Applegate, Cullen, Fisher, & Ven, 2000). In 2004, the final sample included 2,812 (1,280 men and 1,532 women) non-institutionalized English-speaking adults aged 18 years and older.…”

Factors behind support for harsher punishments for common and uncommon offenders

“…Importantly, it was the case for both first time and repeat offenders even when their gender was left unspecified, complementing the existing literature on the role of RWA (Altemeyer, 1996;Applegate et al 2000;Colémant, Van Hiel & Cornelis, 2011;Dunn, 2013;Feld, 2003;Funke, 2005;McKee & Feather, 2008;Tam, Leung and Chiu, 2008;Palasinski & Shortland, 2016).…”

“…Christianity, for example, was found to be a positive correlate of support for corporal punishment and harsher laws (Applegate et al, 2000;Grasmick et al, 1992;Grasmick and McGill, 1994;Unnever et al, 2005;Unnever and Cullen, 2010). However, those viewing God as a guardian of justice were found to be more punitive than those viewing God as gracious and forgiving (Unnever et al, 2005).…”

“…Both past and current research shows that right wing authoritarianism is a generally consistent predictor of punitive attitudes (McKee and Feather, 2008;Palasinski and Shortland, 2016). According to Applegate et al (2000), those who have a low RWA score are more likely to think that criminals, including murderers, are redeemable. Interestingly, however, people scoring high on RWA are only more punitive than average when the crime is directly a threat to the unity and regularity of their society (Dunn, 2013).…”