Contexts for Socialization: Religion, Media, and Community (From Delinquency and Youth Crime, Second Edition, P 317-355, 1992, Gary F Jensen and Dean G Rojek - See NCJ-134932)

• NCJ Number: 134940
• Author(s): G F Jensen; D G Rojek
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 39 pages
• Sale Source: Waveland Press, Inc.
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Religion and the media have not been central to major sociological perspectives or to research on juvenile delinquency during the past several decades.

Abstract

Although sociologists in the late 1800s and early 1900s accorded a significant role to religion in the maintenance of social order, contemporary criminologists and specialists in the sociology of religion have only recently devoted much attention to the relationship between religious variables and juvenile delinquency. Studies conducted since the mid-1970s suggest that religiosity is more likely to be related to illegal drug use than to other delinquent offenses, that religiosity is most relevant to drug use in denominations that prohibit such activity and is more relevant to delinquent offenses among ascetic or fundamentalistic denominations than among liberal denominations, and that religiosity is more relevant to juvenile delinquency in moral than in secular settings. Measures of personal religiosity are more relevant to juvenile delinquency than measures such as church attendance. Further, religiosity explains relatively little about juvenile delinquency when compared to the impact of more intimate social relationships and social bonds. With respect to the media, studies show exposure to televised content intended to arouse aggressive behavior increases the probability of interpersonal aggression in controlled situations where the opportunity for aggression is provided following exposure. This finding, however, cannot be automatically generalized to the relationship between delinquent behavior and exposure to television outside the laboratory setting. The more time a person spends watching television, reading comic books, or reading romance magazines, the greater the probability of involvement in juvenile delinquency, but arguments concerning the causal order and spuriousness of this relationship are not conclusive. Reactions to mass media are conditioned by other characteristics of consumers such that no simple, definitive conclusions about the impact of violence and pornography in the media can be reached. 99 references and 4 figures