‘Losing my Religion’?: Religiosity in the Aftermath of Incarceration
Prisons in the United States were developed with explicitly religious foundations. Religious practice remains embedded in contemporary prisons today through constitutional protections of religious expression that apply to incarcerated people and deep ministerial investments in prison communities fro...
| Autores principales: | ; |
|---|---|
| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
2025
|
| En: |
Journal of developmental and life-course criminology
Año: 2025, Volumen: 11, Número: 1, Páginas: 415-440 |
| Acceso en línea: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Palabras clave: |
| Sumario: | Prisons in the United States were developed with explicitly religious foundations. Religious practice remains embedded in contemporary prisons today through constitutional protections of religious expression that apply to incarcerated people and deep ministerial investments in prison communities from a variety of faith traditions. Scholarly research on the consequences of mass incarceration for individuals, families, and communities, however, includes little consideration of how an incarceration experience might change religious practice, religious beliefs, or connections to religious institutions. The embeddedness of religion in US prisons thus stands in stark contrast to the attention it receives from the research community. This paper contributes to the special issue on Longitudinal and Developmental of Criminal Justice Interventions and Reintegration by examining how exposure to incarceration may change an individual’s religious involvement. Using four waves of panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, this study uses a difference-in-differences and strategic comparison approach to describe how exposure to incarceration may change an individual’s religious involvement using multiple dimensions of religiosity. We find that incarceration experiences have little impact on religious trajectories for most formerly incarcerated people, despite the deep investments in religion found in many prisons in the United States. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2199-465X |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s40865-025-00284-7 |
