COMPOSITION AND SIZE OF SAMPLE: RELIGION

Approximately two thirds of the control and prison groups are Protestant and one quarter are Catholic. Jews arc slightly underrepresented in the control group and are, as is generally the case, rare in the prison group. The religious composition of the sex offenders differs: about three quarters are Protestant, one fifth Catholic, and only .1 per cent Jewish.

The varying proportions of Protestants and Catholics in our groups reflect, insofar as we can determine, the religious distributions in the geographic areas where we worked, and have little or no connection

with behavior. However, in the case of the Jews, we agree with previous studies that there are elements in Jewish culture and family life that militate against the commission of crime. There are simply far too few Jews in our prison and sex-offender groups to be explained in any other way. In only two sex-offender groups do the Jews constitute as much as 2 per cent: these are the homosexual offenders, as one could have anticipated, for it is only in this realm of behavior that no one can find a legal sexual outlet.

As a rule, in the prison and sex-offender groups there are fewer religiously devout than moderately devout individuals, and that those who are rated as inactive in their religion are most numerous of all. In some respects this only mirrors the fact that in or out of prison the religiously devout are always a minority. It also indicates that with increase in devoutness there is usually a decrease in behavior rendering one liable to conviction. There are a number of exceptions to this: sometimes a certain sex-offender group contains more moderately devout than inactive individuals.

In the control group among the Protestants the number of moderately devouts and the number of inactives are nearly equal, with the devouts constituting a minority of 16 per cent. Among the Catholics, however, our sample contains more devout individuals than moderates and more moderates than inactives. This undue proportion of religiously devout was the result of the hospital sample which, being in the northeast part of the United States, contains more devout Catholics than would have been encountered elsewhere.

Disregarding the type of religion and examining solely the degree of devoutness, we find that in the control group 36 per cent are inactive, 35 per cent moderately devout, and 28 per cent devout. Quite different proportions obtain in the prison group, the equivalent percentages being 59, 26, and 15. Taken as a whole, the sex offenders approximate the prison group, but among the sex-offender groups there is great variation. The range extends from the least religious, the offenders vs. adults (64 per cent inactive, 12 per cent devout), to the most religious, the incest offenders vs. adult daughters (36 per cent inactive, 40 per cent devout).