Religion, religiosity and harsh attitudes toward offenders

• In Event: Understanding punishment preferences in the public: New findings from the Central European Social Survey

Abstract

Criminologists have long established religion as a major driver of punitive attitudes. They mainly conclude that this effect is contingent on the image of God conveyed by particular denomination as well as fundamentalism in beliefs. However, these insights come with several limitations: 1) Most research remains clustered in the US, with little European data available, 2) Research seldom makes distinction between religion and religiosity, and 3) comparisons between the embeddedness of religion in different country-specific environments are scarce. We thus use CESS data to examine whether the role of religion in one’s life (religiosity) is more important than religious affiliation when it comes to explaining punishment preferences. Special attention is paid to the interactions between religious denominations and religiosity as well as country-specific effects.

Authors

• Alexander Fürstenberg, Heidelberg University

• Andrzej Uhl, University of Cambridge