The Sociology of Humanist, Spiritual, and Religious Practice in Prison

Supporting Responsivity and Desistance from Crime

Bibliographic Data

ID3554141
AuthorsTom P O’connor (Transforming Corrections, 1420 Court St. NE. Salem, Oregon 97301, USA), Tom O’connor (0000-0001-5948-0975, corresponding author), Jeff B Duncan, Jeff Duncan
Year2011
Volume2
Issue4
Pages590-610
Publication date2011-11-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel2040590
OpenAlexW1988028442
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited17

This paper presents evidence for why Corrections should take the humanist, spiritual, and religious self-identities of people in prison seriously, and do all it can to foster and support those self-identities, or ways of establishing meaning in life. Humanist, spiritual, and religious (H/S/R) pathways to meaning can be an essential part of the evidence-based responsivity principle of effective correctional programming, and the desistance process for men and women involved in crime. This paper describes the sociology of the H/S/R involvement of 349 women and 3,009 men during the first year of their incarceration in the Oregon prison system. Ninety-five percent of the women and 71% of the men voluntarily attended at least one H/S/R event during their first year of prison. H/S/R events were mostly led by diverse religious and spiritual traditions, such as Native American, Protestant, Islamic, Wiccan, Jewish, Jehovah Witness, Latter-day Saints/Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, Buddhist, and Catholic, but, increasingly, events are secular or humanist in context, such as education, yoga, life-skills development, non-violent communication, and transcendental meditation groups. The men and women in prison had much higher rates of H/S/R involvement than the general population in Oregon. Mirroring gender-specific patterns of H/S/R involvement found in the community, women in prison were much more likely to attend H/S/R events than men

Buddhism · Criminology · Humanism · Humanistic psychology · Political science · Population · Prison · Protestantism · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Theology · Witness · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Demography · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious studies

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