Faith-Based Initiatives and Delinquency

Working in collaboration with federal, state, and local criminal justice agencies, faith-based community organizations have played a significant role in gaining and maintaining public trust, decreasing crime, and fostering neighborhood development. Faith-based initiatives that focus on delinquents are important in the study of race and crime because of the differential treatment and disproportionate contact and confinement of minority youth in juvenile justice. Faith-based initiatives can assist in primary, secondary, and tertiary delinquency prevention. This entry describes the rationale for faith-based initiatives, examples of such initiatives, and the role of community with respect to these programs.

The most important link between faith-based organizations and crime has to do with the location of those organizations in communities where crime prevails. In such high-crime, low-income communities, churches continue to have a significant presence. Independent of other factors, church-going individuals from high-poverty neighborhoods may have a greater chance to escape crime and other social ills by the guidance offered in faith-based programs that provide services such as mentoring, mental health counseling, job readiness training, employment opportunities, self-esteem building, parent support groups, and parent readiness classes for teen parents. Often a faith-based organization can help change people's lives and motivate them to rise to new levels of caring for their neighbors. Faith-based organizations located in communities with high levels of delinquency provide an opportunity to engage youth in positive activities.

A basic tenet of faith-based initiatives is that a delinquent individual's association with a religious institution (church, mosque, synagogue, or other house of worship) can contribute to his or her success. Adolescents who participate in extracurricular activities have an advantage not only because those activities divert them from delinquency but also because such programs enable youth to develop positive relationships with the community. Faith-based initiatives give participants the opportunity to acquire skills and attributes that help them succeed. The activities that are associated with faith-based initiatives expose the delinquent individuals to social contacts that can serve as positive role models outside of the original family associations. The development of such contacts gives the delinquent a framework of positive activities that may reduce potential risky behaviors. The personal attention that participants receive also contributes to the reduction of delinquency.

Current discussions on church-state relations represent a new chapter in the living history of faith-based initiatives that seek to reduce crime. As a result of federal legislation, funding for faith-based initiatives has been greatly expanded over the past decade. “Charitable choice” provisions in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act identified several types of social service programming for which [Page 276]religious organizations could receive federal funding. The scope of such programs was further expanded during the George W. Bush administration and now includes agencies in the U.S. Department of Justice such as the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Although some critics are concerned that the legislation violates First Amendment church-state provisions, a number of states and cities have also adopted their own faith-based initiatives.