Faith behind bars: the social ecology of religion and deviance in the penitentiary

Abstract

The relationship between religiosity and institutional misconduct among prison inmates is examined using survey data collected from a large sample of state and federal prison inmates in the United States. It was determined that religiosity was not significantly related to institutional misconduct on the individual level. In addition, aggregate level religiosity did not influence the individual level relationship between religiosity and misconduct. The theoretical implications of this line of research are also discussed.