Religiousness and Post-Release Community Adjustment in the United States, 1990-1998
Description
This study assessed the effects of male inmate religiosity
on post-release community adjustment and investigated the
circumstances under which these effects were most likely to take
place. The researcher carried out this study by adding Federal Bureau
of Investigation criminal history information to an existing database
(Clear et al.) that studied the relationship between an inmate's
religiousness and his adjustment to the correctional setting. Four
types of information were used in this study. The first three types
were obtained by the original research team and included an inmate
values and religiousness instrument, a pre-release questionnaire, and
a three-month post-release follow-up phone survey. The fourth type of
information, official criminal history reports, was later added to the
original dataset by the principal investigator for this study. The
prisoner values survey collected information on what the respondent
would do if a friend sold drugs from the cell or if inmates of his
race attacked others. Respondents were also asked if they thought God
was revealed in the scriptures, if they shared their faith with
others, and if they took active part in religious
services. Information collected from the pre-release questionnaire
included whether the respondent attended group therapy, religious
groups with whom he would live, types of treatment programs he would
participate in after prison, employment plans, how often he would go
to church, whether he would be angry more in prison or in the free
world, and whether he would be more afraid of being attacked in prison
or in the free world. Each inmate also described his criminal history
and indicated whether he thought he was able to do things as well as
most others, whether he was satisfied with himself on the whole or
felt that he was a failure, whether religion was talked about in the
home, how often he attended religious services, whether he had friends
who were religious while growing up, whether he had friends who were
religious while in prison, and how often he participated in religious
inmate counseling, religious services, in-prison religious seminars,
and community service projects. The three-month post-release follow-up
phone survey collected information on whether the respondent was
involved with a church group, if the respondent was working for pay,
if the respondent and his household received public assistance, if he
attended religious services since his release, with whom the
respondent was living, and types of treatment programs
attended. Official post-release criminal records include information
on the offenses the respondent was arrested and incarcerated for,
prior arrests and incarcerations, rearrests, outcomes of offenses of
rearrests, follow-up period to first rearrest, prison adjustment
indicator, self-esteem indicator, time served, and measurements of the
respondent's level of religious belief and personal
identity. Demographic variables include respondent's faith, race,
marital status, education, age at first arrest and incarceration, and
age at incarceration for rearrest.
Resources
| Name |
Format |
Description |
Link |
|
0 |
ICPSR03022.v1 |
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR03022.v1 |
Tags
- church-attendance
- psychological-wellbeing
- correctional-facilities
- postrelease-programs
- social-reintegration
- prison-adjustment
- male-inmates
- parole
- arrest-records
- church-groups
- religious-behavior
- criminal-histories