Religious perceptions of crime and implications for punitiveness

Abstract

This study tests the role of crime perceptions in mediating the relationship between religiosity and punitive attitudes about criminal justice. Specifically, we estimate the effects of (a) religious affiliation and (b) fundamentalism on punitiveness and assess mediation by dispositional attribution of crime, perceived rising crime rates, perceived immigrant crime, and fear of violent victimization. Data are from the 2014 wave of the Chapman Survey on American Fears, a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States (N = 1,573). We estimated religious effects on punitiveness using ordinary least squares regression and assessed mediation by crime perceptions with the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method. Punitiveness was positively associated with Mainline Protestant affiliation (vs. non-religious), Catholic affiliation (vs. non-religious), and fundamentalism (fundamentalism also largely accounted for heightened punitiveness among Evangelical Protestants). Perceptions of crime accounted for about 60% of the effects of religious affiliation on punitiveness and nearly 100% of the effect of fundamentalism. Perceptions of crime as caused by evil or moral failure, belief in rising crime rates, and perceptions of immigrant crime were important to explaining religious effects on punitiveness, while fear of violence was relatively unimportant. These findings illuminate the perceptual mechanisms underlying religious effects on criminal justice attitudes.

Flowing Across with Demonic Hate: Belief in Supernatural Evil and Support for Stricter Immigration Policy

“…Regarding our current study, the criminalization of immigrants increases the likelihood that beliefs about supernatural evil will be connected to attitudes about immigration, as beliefs about evil are a key religious predictor of fears about crime (Bader et al. 2020; Seto and Said 2022), and are likewise connected to greater support for harsh criminal punishment (Baker and Booth 2016; Baker, Cañarte, and Day 2018; Pocknell 2020; Webster and Saucier 2015). The mechanism behind these findings is likely that a dichotomous supernatural worldview—which generally follows from strong belief in supernatural evil in monotheistic traditions—equips individuals to view social issues as morally binary.…”

A Second Chance in the Sunshine State: Religious Identity and Voter Support for Re‐Enfranchisement in Florida

“…Through much of history, religion has served to shape penal practices (Garland 1990), and religious identity continues to shape public ideas concerning politics, laws, and criminal justice (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2018). It is important that researchers take a nuanced approach to distinguish between religious groups (i.e., mainline Protestant, evangelical Protestant) when examining attitudes toward social and political issues, such as criminal policy reform, given the subcultural characteristics each religious group demonstrates (Gay, Ellison, and Powers 1996;Seto and Said 2020). That is, individuals are likely to form a personal identity that is consistent with the religious group's normative attitudes and behaviors (Gay et al 1996).…”

“…This is particularly true of white evangelicals, as race conflates with religious identity in the United States (e.g., Jones 2016; Wilcox 2000). Studies show that fundamentalist beliefs, such as biblical literalism, the existence of an authoritarian God and transcendent evil, and the centrality of punishment for sin, are also directly connected to increased punitiveness among evangelical Protestants (e.g., Baker and Booth 2016; Seto and Said 2020). In spite of such research, however, little attention has been given to the effect religious identity has on attitudes toward felon disenfranchisement, a punitive practice contested in the public and political dialogue about state punishment.…”

Fatalism and Indifference: The Influence of the Frontier on American Criminal Justice

“…Failure to make that distinction (and between African American and White evangelicals and fundamentalists) has bedeviled social science efforts to measure whether, to what extent, and why fundamentalism determines punitiveness. Seto and Said (2020), an important exception, get it right.…”

“…Hairs are empirically split to try to establish whether those views reflect beliefs in "transcendent evil," crime as sin, a masculine image of God, or biblical literalism (Baker and Booth 2016). Disaggregated analyses show that the relationship between fundamentalism and punitiveness is stronger among White than African American fundamentalists, southern than nonsouthern fundamentalists, and fundamentalists who attend church services seldom compared with those who attend often (Seto and Said 2020). Taking all that into account, there is overwhelming evidence than fundamentalist Christians, especially White fundamentalist Protestants, harbor more punitive attitudes toward crime and criminals than do nonfundamentalists.…”