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Byron Johnson - More God, Less Crime: Why Faith Matters and How It Could Matter More

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In More God, Less Crime renowned criminologist Byron R. Johnson proves that religion can be a powerful antidote to crime. The book describes how faith communities, congregations, and faith-based organizations are essential in forming partnerships necessary to provide the human and spiritual capital to effectively address crime, offender rehabilitation, and the substantial aftercare problems facing former prisoners. There is scattered research literature on religion and crime but until now, there has never been one publication that systematically and rigorously analyzes what we know from this largely overlooked body of research in a lay-friendly format. The data shows that when compared to current strategies, faith-based approaches to crime prevention bring added value in targeting those factors known to cause crime: poverty, lack of education, and unemployment. In an age of limited fiscal resources, Americans cant afford a criminal justice system that turns its nose up at volunteer efforts that could not only work better than the abysmal status quo, but also save billions of dollars at the same time. This book provides readers with practical insights and recommendations for a faith-based response that could do just that.

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MORE GOD LESS CRIME More God Less Crime Why Faith Matters and How It - photo 1
MORE GOD, LESS CRIME
More God, Less Crime

Why Faith Matters and How It Could Matter More
Byron R. Johnson
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TEMPLETON PRESS
Templeton Press
300 Conshohocken State Road, Suite 550
West Conshohocken, PA 19428
www.templetonpress.org
2011 by Byron R. Johnson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Templeton Press.
Typeset and designed by Gopa & Ted2, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Byron R.
More God, less crime : why faith matters and how it could matter more / Byron R. Johnson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59947-373-4 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-59947-373-9 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-1-59947-383-3 (ebook) 1. Christianity and justice. 2. CriminologyReligious aspectsChristianity.
3. CrimeReligious aspectsChristianity. 4. Crime prevention.
5. Church work with criminals. I. Title. II. Title: Why faith matters and how it could matter more.
BR115.J8J64 2011
261.83360973dc22
2010051915
Printed in the United States of America
11 12 13 14 15 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Foreword
M ORE GOD, LESS CRIME. Many assume this cause-and-effect statement to be true. Others bridle against the idea, claiming that faith does not enhance virtue or attenuate vice. Byron Johnson masterfully moves us beyond ideology in this debate and shows us the evidence.
In More God, Less Crime, Johnson explains that faith-based organizations (FBOs) work, that their programs deliver better citizens. And then, carefully and systematically, he details how and why they do, citing decades of research on the links between religiosity and reductions in delinquent behavior and deviant activities. Without cutting methodological corners, he lays out the statistical impact of religion on crimerelying on, as he puts it, the differences you can measure.
But he goes further, asking why people object to the patterns in these data. Opposition to embracing the benefits of faith is based, he maintains, on misguided concerns about political correctness, on misplaced fears about proselytism, and on misunderstanding the nature of separation between church and state. After teaching at a wide range of academic institutions for a quarter century, the author knows all too well the hostility toward people of faith and faith-based approaches that exists in large swaths of the academy. What he characterizes as that last acceptable prejudice can also be found in government circles, he claims, where bias toward FBOs continues to be an obstacle. Hostility against faith-based approaches will always exist, he concludes. But this bias should neither prevent people of faith from trying to confront these problems, or scholars from studying these efforts.
Resistance also exists on the church side of the church-state ledger. Johnson does not pull his punches here either. He rejects the purist views of those in the faith community who declare that they dont need to partner with government, that they shouldnt be unequally yoked with secular organizations. Now, he argues, is not a time for separatism or isolation. The stakes are too high, and the potential impact for good too great.
Documenting many examples of the impact of successful sacred-secular partnerships, Johnson introduces us to the Boston Miracle, in which collaboration between church congregations and the Boston Police Department decisively stemmed the tide of violence in that city. And the Amachi experiment in Philadelphia, which mentors the children of incarcerated parents. And the VFZ (Violence Free Zone) initiative in Milwaukee to revitalize public schools in troubled neighborhoods. And the collaboration between the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and Chuck Colsons Prison Fellowship in the Texas InnerChange Freedom Initiative.
These successes are not just isolated anecdotes, Johnson asserts, but rather they are scalable events, capable of replication elsewhere around the country.
Johnsons book outlines a societal win-win: more God, which he argues is good for individuals; less crime, which is obviously good for everybody else. In short, religion can transform the faithful themselves and the communities in which they live. Religion can reduce drug use, domestic violence, delinquency, gang activity, prison recidivism, and other forms of negative behavior. Religion is a powerful antidote to crime, Johnson states, and religion can promote beneficial outcomes and patterns of behavior as well.
Johnson does not shy away from policy recommendations. He argues forcefully that government should not resist faith-based initiatives but rather embrace them, as the ultimate examples of American enterprise, ingenuity, problem-solving, and can-do. In America we should be able to look beyond ideology and endorse what worksa phrase Johnson comes back to repeatedly in this book.
Perhaps even more provocatively for many in the nonprofit world, Johnson argues that FBOs should not resist government, either: faith-based efforts are not sufficient in themselves. Effective as they are, FBOs need powerful partners to solve the problems that beset our communities. Such organizations must find ways of cooperating with others even more; public-private partnerships are his answer. These types of ventures can deliver real and lasting improvements in police-community relations, the raising of at-risk inner-city children, our public schools, gang-based crime, youth homicide, the state of the nations prisons, prison recidivism, and the lives of the children of prisoners.
This book was written for believers and nonbelievers; for those both critical and sympathetic to his views; for both nonprofitistas and government employees. From start to finish, Johnson empirically demonstrates the impact of faith-based partnerships, making the proposition of more God, less crime less an act of faith, and more a matter of fact.
Arthur C. Brooks
President, American Enterprise Institute
Introduction
T HE CENTRAL ARGUMENT of More God, Less Crime is that faith-motivated individuals, faith-based organizations, and the transformative power of faith itself are proven keys in reducing crime and improving the effectiveness of our criminal justice system. We now know that intentional partnerships between congregations and law enforcement can lead to dramatic improvement in police-community relations and reductions in crime, youth violence, and gang activity. We also know that faith-based programs can provide an antidote to the harmful culture that permeates so many of our correctional facilities. In this way, religion can help change prisons from an environment for learning even more deviant behavior to places where rehabilitation is a realistic possibility. Additionally, faith-motivated mentors and faith-based groups can provide both the support and supervision necessary to help not only prisoners but also those former prisoners stay crime-free by leading moral and productive lives.
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