Faith-Based Initiatives and Delinquency

Gilton Christopher Grange

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 ...

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