This is a foundational text on this topic (especially the final essay on ‘Elementary forms of religious life’) and parts of it will be familiar to students studying sociology. While elements of this text are challenging for younger readers, I would encourage focused students who are planning to pursue social sciences at university to attempt at least passages from it. Durkheim’s thought develops through this collection and it is possible to watch the importance of religion grow in his eyes. Although the primary focus is the boundary between individual and collective thought, religion is both created by the community and creates the community. For Durkheim, the importance of religion in living a moral life as part of that community cannot be overestimated.

This collection of essays includes an international, multi-faith perspective of the connection between religion and crime, focusing on religion as giving people shared values and the ways it can both cause and prevent crime. Essays in this collection include considerations of 'hellfire' preaching as a means of crime prevention, the link between mental health, faith and criminal deviance, essays on the changing nature of criminalisation in post-colonial contexts in Uganda and Nigeria, and even the connection between witchcraft and dehumanising criminal practices in Tanzania. I encourage my higher students to dip into these essays as further reading for their coursework assignments on criminal justice and to broaden their perspectives. 

This academic monograph provides a balanced discussion of religion’s pro-social and more problematic aspects and argues that the impact of religion should be given more academic attention by criminologists. After an extensive literature review investigating the evolutionary origins of religion and crime, their section on religion as leading to pro-social behaviour is particularly relevant here. They explore studies linking religion to volunteerism, civic engagement and altruistic behaviour, and conflicting ideas about whether its influence is positive only on ‘in-group’ members or society as a whole. While some of Durrant and Poppelwell’s concepts are complex, my pupils enjoy the critical discussion that they provoke. 

American Christian criminologist Byron Johnson unashamedly argues that religion can both prevent offences and rehabilitate offenders. Focusing especially on programmes for people from vulnerable subcultures such as ‘buddy’ systems, he argues that church communities and Christian values provide the ideal context for enabling young people to make better decisions in life, whether instead of or after becoming involved in the criminal justice system. He backs up his arguments with numerous case studies and data, and my students find some of his pro-religion statements particularly quotable. While he does acknowledge that other religions and community groups also have a positive social influence, he focuses on the idea of a ‘transformative’ Christian faith and conversion experience as enabling an individual to turn their life around. 

An investigation into the role of religion in prison, the act of forgiveness granted by religion, and the efficacy of religion in preventing future crime.