Measuring Religion in Prisons: Offenders' Beliefs and Attitudes

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Measuring Religion in Prisons: Offenders' Beliefs and AttitudesJoanna R. Adler a; Jonathan Burnside b; Nancy Loucks c; G. Tendayi Viki d

a Department of Psychology, Middlesex University, b School of Law, University of Bristol, c IndependentCriminologist, d Department of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury

Online Publication Date: 05 June 2008

To cite this Article Adler, Joanna R., Burnside, Jonathan, Loucks, Nancy and Viki, G. Tendayi(2008)'Measuring Religion in Prisons:Offenders' Beliefs and Attitudes',Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice,8:2,130 — 149

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WFPP1522-89321522-9092Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, Vol. 8, No. 2, April 2008: pp. 1–32Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice

FULL-LENGTH ARTICLES

Measuring Religion in Prisons: Offenders’ Beliefs and Attitudes

Full-Length ArticleJournal Of Forensic Psychology Practice Joanna R. Adler, PhDJonathan Burnside, PhD

Nancy Loucks, PhDG. Tendayi Viki, PhD

ABSTRACT. This article reports on ways to measure and assess theeffects of living within a religious regime, comparing Kainos prisonerswith matched control participants. Kainos is a Christian, cognitive behav-ioral regime run in English prisons. In this article, we consider prisoners’attitudes toward religion and provide objective information regarding theimpact of a religious intervention on the religiosity of prisoners. Wepresent data from three scales: the Santa Clara Strength of ReligiousFaith (SCSORF; Plante & Boccaccini, 1997a); the Age Universal I-E

Dr. Joanna Adler is in the Department of Psychology at Middlesex University.Dr. Nancy Loucks is an Independent Criminologist.Dr. Jonathan Burnside is at the School of Law at University of Bristol.Dr. G. Tendayi Viki is at the Department of Psychology at the Department of

Psychology at the University of Kent, Canterbury.Address correspondence to: Dr. Joanna R. Adler, Department of Psychology,

Middlesex University, The Town Hall, The Burroughs, Hendon, London, NW4 4BT(E-mail: J.Adler@ mdx.ac.uk).

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Full-Length Article 131

(Intrinsic-Extrinsic) Scale (Maltby, 2002; Maltby & Lewis, 1997); andthe Francis Attitudes Towards Christianity Scale (Francis, 1993b; Fran-cis, Lewis, Philipchalk, Brown, & Lester, 1995; Lewis & Maltby, 1997;Lewis, Shevlin, Lloyd, & Adamson, 1998). Two hundred and sixteenprisoners participated, from across all prisons in which Kainos ran. TheKainos program attracted prisoners who were already seeking spiritualsustenance. Religious prisoners held at normal, non-Kainos locationswere less likely to retain their beliefs. There are implications for how thePrison Service could better sustain spirituality among the imprisoned.

KEYWORDS. Religious orientation, prisons and religion, prisoners’ faith

This article provides an analysis of the use of standardized religiousorientation scales within an imprisoned population. We measure the reli-gious and faith-based attitudes of two sets of prisoners, those livingwithin a Christian wing and those living in a more usual, main location.We utilize standardized scales and draw on supplemental qualitativeinterviews that were conducted. Given that public debate on the regimeprecedes this article, we have not anonymized the charitable trust,although individual data are anonymized.

The English and Welsh National Offender Management Service (NOMS)routinely collects data regarding offenders’ religious affiliations, but littlework has been conducted to assess prisoners’ religious beliefs while incar-cerated in Britain. Also, dedicated religious units have had a checkered his-tory, with political resistance towards their existence and reluctance to fundthem, relying instead on outside agencies. Yet, the role of religion withinprisons is well established. The statement of purpose of the prison chap-laincy ties directly into NOMS’ and includes the aim and belief that

“. . . faith and the search for meaning directs and inspires life, and[we] are committed to providing sacred spaces and dedicated teamsto deepen and enrich human experience. We contribute to the careof prisoners to enable them to lead law-abiding and useful lives incustody and after release.” (http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/adviceandsupport/prison_life/religion/ accessed January, 2007)

The ability to maintain one’s religious beliefs and practices withinprison is codified in human rights legislation in Britain and is a constitu-tional right in the United States of America (Sumter, 2006).


132 JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY PRACTICE

In the United States, religious regimes have become mainstream, withfederal policy support and funding. With their rapid growth, has comemore thorough investigation of the motivations for those volunteering tobe held within such regimes as well as the regimes’ impacts (e.g., Camp,Klein-Safran, Kwon, Daggett, & Joseph, 2006). However, prior to the fewrecent studies, there was much variation in the nature and quality of thescant research that existed. The problems include oversimplified mea-sures of religion or spirituality and lack of appropriate comparison groupsand have been well documented in several places (Aos, Miller, & Drake,2006; Gartner, Larson, & Allen, 1991; O’Connor, 2005). This articleadopts a multi-dimensional approach to assessing the impact of KainosCommunity (Christian, cognitive behavioral therapeutic) regimes on thespiritual and religious growth of those prisoners who joined them, in com-parison to prisoners held elsewhere in the same prisons.

In the early 1970s, a Christian organization based in Brazil started toreach in to prisoners. The Association for the Protection and Assistance ofthe Convicted (APAC) inspired a number of similar organizations and, in1976, Kairos began providing Christian ministry to American prisonersand their families. It currently runs weekend and follow-up programs in33 states and in five other countries. In England, the Kainos Trust took theideals of Kairos and APAC to form specialist faith based communities,housed within English prisons. It currently operates in two prisons, run-ning Christian rehabilitative units. The program has been somewhatrevamped and scaled back as a result of evaluation and political interven-tion. Throughout its inception, however, Kainos community wings havebeen designed to provide cognitive behavioral interventions within anovertly Christian context. Prisoners held in the Kainos Community wingslived in a faith-based therapeutic milieu. At the start of a formalized seriesof interventions, known as the Kainos Program, prisoners attended aKairos Weekend. The Kairos Weekend’s organizing principles were wellestablished internationally, while the full Kainos Program was tailoredtoward English implementation.

Although faith-based, the aims of the organization were to recruit prison-ers who were not necessarily already religious. Prisoners were not requiredto be a member of any organized religion before or after joining the units.However Christianity was central to the running of the wings. Guiding prin-ciples included that prospective prisoner recruits to the wing should havebeen targeted, irrespective of whether they had a strong religious convic-tion. Indeed, non-religious “negative leaders” were particularly high on thedesired list of potential wing recruits. Kainos aimed to offer prisoners a



general “challenge to change” within a combination of Christian teaching,cognitive behavioral techniques, and community living.

In an article published after this research was completed, Kerley, Matthews& Blanchard (2005) found associations between religious belief and “pro-social” behaviors. They concluded that religious beliefs are associated withlower likelihoods of both arguing and fighting but only when the prison con-text generally promotes basic pro-social behaviors. Their findings added tothe picture of “religious wards” painted by Timor (1998). In Israel, religiousunits were characterized as places fundamentally different from mainstreamprison wings, places in which prisoners might challenge their self-identity andmove towards “construction of a new noncriminal reality.” Such findingsbode well for the ethos and setup within Kainos community wings.

This article concentrates on prisoners’ attitudes towards religion and per-sonal belief. The data considered here were collected as part of our evaluationof four Kainos wings. We have elsewhere reported on psychosocial, recidi-vism, and attitudinal impacts of the Kainos community (Burnside, Adler,Loucks, Rose, & Viki, 2002) and set it within a broader international context(Burnside, Loucks, Adler, & Rose, 2005). This article is concerned with themeasurement and implications of the religious aspects of the regime.

There is a century of work exploring both religious belief itself and a host ofsocial scientific approaches to its study (Allport, 1959; Gorsuch, 1988; Hester &Paloutzian, 1998; King & Crowther, 2004; Kwilecki, 1988; Leong & Zachar,1990; Strizenec, 1992). Gordon Allport proffered a number of approaches to thestudy of religion, (Allport, 1950). The Religious Orientation Scale (ROS;Allport & Ross, 1967) was published at the end of his career and, despite hisconcerns about the need for qualitative as well as quantitative approaches to thestudy of religion, the ROS has been a substantial part of his influential legacy

More recently, debate has concerned the respective roles of intrinsic (thepersonal, individual religious experience) in comparison with extrinsic (mem-bership of a group with shared beliefs that provides protection and powerwithin a society) aspects of religion (Donahue, 1985; Genia, 1993; Gorsuch &Mcpherson, 1989; Gorsuch & Venable, 1983; Maltby, 1999a, 2002; Maltby &Lewis, 1996; Morris & Hood, 1981). The roles of quest in religious orientationhave been discussed (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991a &, 1991b; Genia, 1996;Williams & Faulconer, 1994) as have possible relationships between religionand personality (Carter, Kay, & Francis, 1996; Francis 1993a; Francis &Bourke, 2003; Hills, Francis, Argyle, & Jackson, 2004; Maltby, 1999b;Maltby & Day, 2001, 2004; Maltby, Talley, Cooper, & Leslie, 1995).

There have been some studies that explored ways to measure religionand faith in prisons. Using various ways to operationalize religious belief



or practice, they built on the routine data gathered by some correctionalservices (Koenig, 1995). Ten years later, Fernander, Wilson, Staton, &Leukefeld (2005) explored spiritual and existential well-being alongsidereligiosity measures derived from Koenig, laying emphasis on the spiri-tual rather than religious dimensions. Johnson (2004), as part of an assess-ment of prison fellowship, focused on attendance at Bible studies. Somehave explored the roles of chaplains (Muslim and Christian) and theirimpressions of those within their ministry (Ammar; Weaver & Saxon,2004; Sundt & Cullen, 2002). Yet, as mentioned, there were few, if any,systematic uses of broad based standardized measures.

Ways of best measuring religion have been continuously debated, andthere have been a number of useful literature reviews, meta-analyses, etc,that inform the debate as to exactly what is measured and how reliably(Deconchy, 1987; Exline, 2002; Francis, Lewis, Philipchalk, Brown, &Lester, 1995; Hunsberger, 1991; Idler et al., 2003; Lewis & Maltby, 1997;Maltby & Lewis, 1996; Pargament, 2002; Sherman et al., 2000; Slater,Hall, & Edwards, 2001; Strizenec, 1997; Trimble, 1997). Attitudes and ori-entations towards Christianity, rather than religion in general, are alsodirectly pertinent as Kainos had an avowedly Christian mission. Specificscales for Christianity have been developed and quite extensively reviewed(Francis, 1993b; Hall, Tisdale, & Brokaw, 1994; Joseph & Lewis, 1997;Lewis, Shevlin, Lloyd, & Adamson, 1998; Maltby & Lewis, 1997).

The guidance materials provided by Kainos for their staff explicitly statethat the program is designed to build trust, to enhance self-esteem, to helprehabilitate prisoners, and to engage them with building and rebuilding socialskills for life outside prison. All this was to be achieved within a Christiancontext, using cognitive behavioral techniques that should have an impact onthe prisoners within prison and post release. Clear, Hardyman, Stout, Lucken,& Dammer, 2000; Hewitt, 2006; O’Connor, Duncan, & Quillard, 2006 allargue that the value of religion in prison must go beyond assessing its contri-bution to prevention of recidivism. They call for a more compassionate, dig-nified approach to imprisonment that not only will help prevent deteriorationin prison, possibly leading to personal transformations, but may

“help to prevent the deterioration of a society that seems to befocused on a widespread system of punishment that has little or no‘medicinal’or rehabilitative effect.” (O’Connor, 2005).

In his reaction essay to Camp et al. (2006), Hewitt challenges whetherit is possible or even appropriate to try to test faith empirically, arguing



that faith is beyond falsifiable approaches. However, he also reminds usthat religion can never be seen as a panacea for crime, that desistanceshould be open to all, whether religious, secular, or somewhere inbetween (2006). That is not to say that recidivism is irrelevant, nor thatreligious regimes should not be accountable. It would be naïve and inap-propriate to argue that religious regimes should be excluded from thesame standards as other prison based interventions.

The cohort of prisoners considered here could not be assessed on mea-sures of recidivism, as there were not sufficient numbers of prisonersreleased. However, as part of the wider project, Gerry Rose conducted atwo-year recidivism analysis that was reported in Burnside et al. (2005) andhas been incorporated into the recent meta-analysis considering the impactof religious regimes on recidivism (Aos, Miller, & Drake, 2006). Rose con-cluded that the Kainos community led to a marginal but insignificantdecrease in recidivism, an effect that required substantive investigation aftermore prisoners had been released for longer. This is broadly similar to con-clusions by Aos et al. and, in the near future, there will be more data con-tributing to this debate (e.g., ongoing work by Camp et al., 2006).

When recruiting prisoners into the Kainos Community wings, the KainosTrust’s guiding principles included that prospective prisoner recruitsshould have been targeted, irrespective of whether they had a strong reli-gious conviction. Indeed, non-religious “negative leaders” were particu-larly high on the desired list of potential community participants. Giventhis, Kainos prisoners should not have been significantly different fromother prisoners before the start of the program but would be expected tobe significantly more pro-Christian and pro-religious by the end of theirtime with Kainos. This article is therefore predominately concerned withtwo hypotheses: That there will be no difference between religious beliefson Kainos and main prison wings before the start of Kainos programs.After the implementation of Kainos programs, prisoners on Kainos willbe significantly more pro-Christian and pro-religion, and there will be nosuch change within the control group.

METHODOLOGY

Participants

Two hundred and sixteen prisoners participated, 35 of whom werewomen; 107 came from Kainos wings, and 109 were matched controls.



The sample was drawn from each prison in which Kainos was running.The control and research group were matched on institution, gender, age,sentence length, index offence, marital status, and previous custodialsentences. Although participants were not matched directly for ethnicity,they were broadly similar. Figures for the two groups—research first,with control in parentheses—are as follows: White, 57% (59.8 %), Black,29% (34.5%), Asian, 3.7% (2.7%), and Other 10.3% (2.8%). Table 1shows the breakdown between research and control groups by institutionand indicates a problem with the time 2 control group participation rate.From the Kainos sample, there were 29 fewer participants at time 2 thanat time 1. Twenty-two were prisoners who had either dropped out of theregime or been moved from the prison itself. In the control sample, therewere 73 fewer participants at time 2. Again, some of these lost partici-pants were due to the Prison Service’s moving prisoners on to other pris-ons, but here there was more loss through withdrawal from the research.In one prison, rates were so low that a decision was taken not to includeany time 2 data. More background information, including several tablesof demographic data, is available from the technical report of this study(Burnside et al., 2002) online at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/kainos_finalrep.pdf

Materials

Materials were produced to satisfy the commissioning specificationsidentified by Kainos, the Prison Service and the Home Office; theyconformed to both the British Psychological Society’s general ethical

TABLE 1. Sample numbers

Highpoint North (Women)

The Verne (Men)

Swaleside (Men)

Highpoint South (Men)

(Total)

TIME 1Research Group 17 36 30 24 107Control Group 18 36 30 25 109*TOTAL 216

TIME 2 12 26 25 15 78 (−29)Research GroupControl Group 8 13 15 None gathered 36 (−73)TOTAL 114

* The matched control group was slightly larger than the research group at Time 1 becauseindividual matches were made for two Kainos prisoners at Time 1 who declined to take part.



principles and those specifically required of members of the Division ofForensic Psychology. The protocol included three religious measures andsome open-ended questions requesting additional comments. We tried toselect religious scales that were well established and standardized. Giventhe limited publication of research measuring religion in prisons at thetime of implementation, we contacted scale authors to ascertain theirlikely reliability within a prison setting, as well as evaluating the scalesmentioned in the introduction above. (We are particularly grateful to JohnMaltby and Tom Plante in this regard.)

When pilot testing the religious measures, we originally utilized the fol-lowing: the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith (SCSORF) scale(Lewis, Shevlin, McGurkin, & Navr’atil, 2001; Plante & Boccaccini,1997a, 1997); the Age Universal I-E (Intrinsic-Extrinsic) Scale (Maltby,2002; Maltby & Lewis, 1997), including the Quest sub-scale (Maltby,Lewis, & Day, 1999); the Francis Attitudes Towards Christianity scale(Francis, 1993b; Francis et al. 1995; Lewis & Maltby, 1997; Lewis, Shevlin,Lloyd, and Adamson, 1998); and the Duke Religious Index (Koenig,Parkerson, & Meador, 1997; Sherman et al., 2000). It quickly became clearthat the prisoners did not understand some of the wording on the Dukescale, even after considerable attempts at contextual rephrasing, while keep-ing the intention of the items. Similar problems were encountered with theExtrinsic items on the Age Universal I-E Scale and the Quest subscale.These subscales include items about frequency of church attendance andthe interaction between the respondent and her or his community. Despitebeing rephrased for an incarcerative context, the extrinsic and quest scaleswere lacking in variance and not reliable measures with this sample.

The final version of the materials was therefore limited to the SCSORF,the Francis Attitudes Towards Christianity Scale, and the Intrinsic subscaleof the I-E Age Universal. As implied by the name, the SCSORF centersaround the word faith. It explores whether and to what extent faith isimportant in the life of the respondent. The concept of faith and its relativeimportance varies between religions, so while necessary, we felt it insuffi-cient as a measure. We also employed the Francis scale as that is tailoredspecifically towards Christian belief and practice. It was developed withWelsh young people but has since been widely used in adult populations.As a well-validated, reliable measure of Christianity, it was ideal for thisstudy. The full I-E Age Universal scale is most closely derived from All-port’s Religious Orientation Scale and has been previously well validatedon British as well as North American samples. We used only the intrinsicscale that concentrates on internalized and individual religiosity.



All scales were implemented using four point scales, 1 to 4 beingStrongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, and Strongly Agree. Internal reliabilitywas measured using Cronbach’s alpha. SCSORF was .97 at both times;Intrinsic Orientation to Religion was .93 at time 1 and .95 at time 2; and theFrancis Attitudes Towards Christianity alpha score was .98 at both times.These alpha scores are higher than would be expected and imply somedegree of conceptual overlap between items but do show that the scales hadhigh reliability and internal validity when used within a prison setting.

Please note that the full research protocol consisted of 129 items; thefirst 21 were demographic and about prison life in general. The remainderincluded those measures considered here and psychosocial scales assess-ing the impact of Kainos on attitudes and behavior in the light of its goals:Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (Beck, Brown, Steer, & Weissman, 1991),Self-Esteem (Rosenberg, 1989), Crime PICS II (Frude, Honess, & Maguire,1998) and Anxiety (Spielberger, 1983). The findings for those measureshave been reported elsewhere (Burnside et al. 2005).

Procedure

Data were collected between September, 2000 and April, 2001. Prison-ers were interviewed twice, to assess various aspects of their well-being,psychological state, attitudes towards offending behavior, and religiousperspectives. Time 1 was prior to the start of the Kainos program (for theresearch group). In each establishment, the formal start of the programwas taken to be the Kairos Weekend. However, most prisoners who partic-ipated on the Weekend were already living in the Kainos unit prior to anyformal intervention. Time 2 data were gathered two weeks after the con-clusion of the Kainos Program (approximately 4 months after the week-end). The shortest interview took 15 minutes, although the median lengthwas 40. Nine participants required the presence of an additional prisonerto translate; these interviews took up to 2.5 hours to complete. Consentwas obtained using the usual prison-based conventions of limited (bysecurity) confidentiality and anonymity for the reporting of the research.

RESULTS

Descriptives

At time 1, the research and control groups diverged on religious belief.Sixty-two percent of the research group described themselves as Christian,



and 38%, as non-Christian. These figures were nearly reversed for thecontrol group, of whom only 34% described themselves as Christian. Inother words, Kainos attracted Christians as opposed to non-Christians at arate of nearly two to one, despite the aim to target more disruptive, notnecessarily Christian, prisoners.

This difference was less marked when belief, rather than Christianity,was measured; the research group included a greater proportion of peoplewho said that they had religious belief (of any kind) than the controlgroup. Ninety-three percent of those in the research group were believers,including Hindu, Sikh, Theist, and others, as well as Christian. Of thecontrol group, 73% described themselves as believers compared to 27%who described themselves as atheists or agnostics.

Hypotheses Testing

The main hypothesis under investigation here is that prisoners wouldexpress stronger feelings of religiosity and more positive attitudestowards Christianity between time 1 and time 2, while the control groupwould not show such shifts. To test this, a 2 (Time: Time 1 vs. Time 2) × 2(Condition: Kainos vs. non-Kainos) mixed-model analysis of variance(ANOVA) was performed on each dependent measure. A series of three-way ANOVAs were also conducted to assess whether the control mea-sures including age, marital status, institution, length of sentence, andtype of sentence had an effect on the findings.

As can be seen from Table 2, there were differences in the religiousscores between those on the Kainos wings and the control group at bothtimes. There were also some shifts towards higher scores within theKainos group between time 1 and time 2.

Our analyses revealed significant interaction effects of Time by Conditionon all religious measures (all p scores < .05): SCSORF, F = 11.15 df (1, 109);Intrinsic Orientation, F = 6.48 df (1, 109); and Francis, F = 9.70 df (1, 112).Over time, the Kainos participants became more likely to endorse pro-religious and pro-Christian attitudes. Simple effect analyses indicated that forthe research group, changes over time tended towards significance for two ofthe scales, whereas one revealed a significant change over time. TheSCSORF and Intrinsic Orientation measures, respectively, gave t = 1.742 df(110), p = .08; and t = 1.758 df (110), p = .08. Again, the strongest effect wasfound on the Francis attitudes to Christianity: t = 2.942 df (113) p < .01.

Results from the SCSORF scale showed that Kainos participants whohave opted to live within a Christian wing state more pro-faith views than



non-Kainos participants at both time 1 and time 2. This scale concentrateson how important a role faith plays in the respondents’ lives. Kainosgroup’s responses tend towards agreement with pro-religious statementsat Time 1, while responses from the control group tend towards disagree-ment. Even here, around one-fourth of prisoners expressed pro-faith state-ments. In addition, Kainos participants state more pro-religious viewsover time compared to non-Kainos participants. At time 2, the responsesof Kainos participants headed towards strong agreement while non-Kainos responses moved towards greater disagreement.

The Maltby Intrinsic (Orientation to Religion) subscale is not focusedon faith. Instead, it assesses the centrality of religion to respondents’lives. Again, Kainos participants stated more pro-religious views thannon-Kainos participants at both time 1 and time 2. At time 2, Kainosresponses moved closer to strong agreement while non-Kainos responsesheaded in the opposite direction towards greater disagreement. Again, onthe Francis Attitudes Towards Christianity scale, Kainos participantswere more positive at both times. Both groups tended to agree with theattitudes on the scale, but the Kainos participants stated more positiveattitudes towards Christianity over time. At time 2, Kainos responsesmoved closer to strong agreement while non-Kainos responses slippedaway a little towards disagreement.

Three-way ANOVAs were also conducted to check the control vari-ables, including age, institution, marital status, religious beliefs, ethnicity,and number of previous sentences. There was no consistent pattern to any

TABLE 2. Religious orientation and attitudes to Christianity for research and control groups

Mean (Kainos)

Std Dev. (Kainos)

Variance(Kainos)

MEASURE Mean (Control)

Std Dev. (Control)

Variance (Control)

2.93 .76 .54 SCSORF (Religious Faith) TIME 1

2.45 .97 .95

3.16 .80 .65 SCSORF TIME 2 2.27 1.02 1.032.85 .66 .44 ROS (Intrinsic Religious

Orientation) TIME 12.47 .92 .84

3.05 .83 .69 ROS TIME 2 2.32 .91 .833.17 .56 .32 FRANCIS (Attitudes to

Christianity) SCALE TIME 12.82 .83 .69

3.40 .63 .40 FRANCIS SCALE TIME 2 2.75 .83 .70

1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = agree and 4 = strongly agree.



of these variables. Albeit to a limited extent, the Kainos Programappeared to have been the agent of change.

The length of time spent on Kainos wings before formal interventionvaried from 15 to 77 weeks; the mean was 33 weeks. A further test wasrun to see whether there was any relationship between the significanteffects noted above and the length of time spent on Kainos Community,within the environment but without direct intervention. No relationshipwas found.

As mentioned in the methodology section, there was some concernover the control participant attrition rate. We thus conducted comparisonsof the time 1 data, comparing those who stayed in the study with thosewho did not participate at time 2. We ran a 2 (Kainos vs. Non-Kainos) × 2(Stayed vs. Dropped-Out) multivariate ANOVA on each of the dependentvariables within the study. This tested whether there were general differ-ences between those who stayed and those who dropped out, regardless ofwhether research or control participants, also whether there were signifi-cant differences between Kainos participants who stayed or dropped outand non-Kainos participants who stayed or dropped out. There was nodifference on any of the initial religious measures between those controlgroup prisoners who participated through to time 2 and those whodropped out after time 1. There were some differences on other measuresregarding their empathy, attitudes towards well-being, and dysfunctionalattitudes (see Burnside, et al., 2002).

Participants’ Comments

The qualitative data provide some useful insight into participants’ feel-ings about Kainos and into their own religious beliefs. We have limitedour consideration of the qualitative material here, to that which is themost pertinent to the hypotheses. For more elaborate consideration ofmore discursive qualitative materials, please see Nancy Loucks’ andJonathan Burnside’s work within Burnside et al. (2005). In the quotationsgiven below, the numbers represent the interview number.

Kainos have a clear aim to recruit widely, whether or not prisoners areovertly religious prior to engagement with the community. It is still not sur-prising that Kainos prisoners frequently described religious motives forjoining the wing. Some wanted “somewhere where I can expand on myspirituality” (187, Christian, recent convert), while others wanted to recovera faith that had weakened or been lost: “. . . to get back into the swing ofthings” (118, Mormon). For some, this was prompted by their experiences:



“I wanted to see if I still believed in God after all that had happened tome . . . I just want to find Him again and ask Him if He’s still there for me”(122). One young lifer, in the context of expressing distress about hisoffence, said, “I need to ask questions about free will . . . I hope to get astronger faith out of it” (116). Another prisoner had recently completed theRehabilitating Addicted Prisoners’ trust (RAPt) step program and was: “. . .looking for my higher power . . . I want to find out who God really is” (182,Roman Catholic). Others expressed a general desire to learn about religionor “curiosity . . . about God and about my own spiritual self” (192, Theist).

Such prisoners were not only more inclined to join Kainos but alsoappeared better motivated to benefit from the religious teaching. Predict-ably, a number of prisoners reported changes in their religious outlooks atTime 2. For some, this meant a new respect for religion in general—“Icame away with a balanced view about religion, whereas before I waspretty much against religion” (393)—or a strengthened religious faith,whether Christian or non-Christian. One Hindu prisoner commented thatthe Kairos Weekend: “. . . makes the God-consciousness inside you morestrong” (260) while a Seventh Day Adventist felt that the weekend: “. . .puts you one foot further in believing in God and to put your trust in Godand have faith and love” (271). Some claimed that their own personalexperiences of religious change were more widely shared. One prisonerwho identified himself as a Theist at Time 1 but said that he hoped tobecome a Christian at Time 2, said,

“I have spoken to other people before we did the course and theyhad a complete controversy with religion as such and after, they hada completely different perspective . . . I’m interested in learningmore about religion and Christianity” (257).

On the other hand, a higher proportion of non-Kainos respondents saidthat they found religion “boring” (202, Agnostic) or “quite uncomfortable”(141) and that they were put off joining Kainos because it was religious:“it’s not my type of thing” (203, Agnostic). Prisoners who did not seethemselves as having any interest in religion were understandably lessmotivated to take part in a wing that was overtly religious. Some said thatthey did not want to appear as hypocrites in their own or anyone else’seyes. A number of non-Kainos prisoners said they found religion “inter-esting” (151) but had their own reasons for not wanting to join Kainos:“There’s no reason for it [Kainos] whatsoever. If I want to worship myLord I can go to the chapel” (114, Christian).



A number of research group participants reported joining Kainos tolearn about Christianity—“I felt I didn’t have enough Christian religionin general” (186, Theist)—or the Bible: “I just want to, ah, learn moreabout the Bible” (172, Roman Catholic). Some had been Christians fora short time and wanted to meet “like-minded, Christian people” (129,Christian) while others wanted to rebuild their belief “I came onto[Kainos] because I was falling away in my Christian faith” (114). Otherswere adherents of other religious faiths who wanted to learn more aboutChristianity.

Again, a number of prisoners reported a changed religious outlook atTime 2: “Six and a half months ago, I wouldn’t have picked up a Bible”(272, Theist). For some, this meant a new respect for Christianity: “I wasa general believer, now I’m trying to be a Christian. I’ve got rid of a lot ofskepticism” (396), while for others it strengthened an existing faith: “It[the Kairos Weekend] confirmed my belief, my strength of belief inChristianity” (259). Several said that they had become Christians whilebeing on Kainos. However, there were a few anomalous reports. Forexample, one prisoner noted that exposure to Kainos could have theopposite effect. He was irked by “people trying to be Christians . . .[when] basically they’ve no intentions of being so” and claimed that “Inthe long run, if I don’t move off the wing soon, Kainos inmates will putme off Christianity and the Church” (282, Roman Catholic).

DISCUSSION

There are plenty of indications that among some people, prison canbe a place of spiritual growth. The comments made and the grouplevel information from the religious measures show, however, that thepicture of religious adherence, spiritual belief, and behavioral expres-sion of them is somewhat complex. The SCSORF, and Francis Atti-tudes Towards Christianity scales worked well, as did the Intrinsicscale from the Age Universal revised version of the Religious Orienta-tion Scale. There was some variation between the different measuresbut largely in the control group findings, which had a higher attritionrate. In the research group, pro-religious attitudes on one scale werematched by similar pro-religious attitudes in the next. The SCSORFpattern of results is further supported by the Maltby and LewisIntrinsic version of the Religious Orientation Scale and the FrancisAttitudes Towards Christianity scale.



These findings also need to be taken in the context of the qualitativeinformation provided by prisoners. In terms of our first hypothesis, it isclear that the Kainos prisoners were more likely to look favorably on theKainos wing and its ethos before they joined. This finding is strikinglysimilar to that of Camp et al., who were collecting data at the same time,in America; the prisoners joining Kainos could be characterized as “seek-ers” (2006). The Kainos claims that they target negative leaders andrecruit widely across the prisons were somewhat undermined by the realityof those who were actually moved onto their wings. Before any interven-tion, they had prisoners who were already on religious quests, seeking toknow more. It might be possible to argue that simply living within theKainos Community was itself enough to sustain those prisoners alongtheir journey. Were this the case, then we might have predicted that lengthof stay on the Kainos wings would have had a significant effect on theshifts in religiosity. Our findings indicated that time spent on the wing,prior to formal intervention, had no impact. Thus the therapeutic milieu,and indeed the religious inclinations, needed to be supplemented by theweekend and program for the continued journeys.

All three scales show that the Kainos community participants weremore religious and held more positive attitudes towards Christianity thannon-Kainos prisoners, both before and after program completion. Theincreases in their scores show that Kainos seemed to have some effect inreinforcing religious beliefs of those who participated in the community.That Kainos participants became more religious and developed more pos-itive attitudes towards Christianity compared to controls was predictable;indeed, it was probably inevitable, and we can therefore conclude that oursecond hypothesis was supported.

What is slightly less predictable is the almost direct mirroring of religiousbeliefs of those prisoners who stayed in the main, non-Kainos locationswith increasingly negative responses. The vast majority of Christian pris-oners, and all prisoners who are not of that faith, do not have dedicatedwings providing a faith-based regime within the British system. Prisonersare allowed to practice their religions within the constraints of a securesetting, but they do not have access to the kinds of supportive, all-pervasive,faith-based regimes that Kainos provided. In many respects, the controlgroup experience is that from which we should seek to generalize themost. Their slight progression away from pro-religious attitudes and towardsdisagreement with Christianity may be reflective of their more constrainedopportunities to practice. Unfortunately, the high attrition rate in the controlgroup means that caution needs to be exercised over such discussion.



The time 1 data are inherently interesting as they provide a snapshot ofreligious belief and attitudes towards Christianity in prisons. This snapshotcan be further enhanced by reference to the work of Kerley et al. (2005).If pro-social work and space for religious belief coincide, prisons can bemore effective vehicles for rehabilitation. When working within a prison,it is a common occurrence to hear of religious belief being used as acoping mechanism, and there have been high-profile religious conversionsundergone by the formerly disgraced—and sometimes newly integrated—offender, Malcolm X and Alan Aitken, to mention two very differentexamples. Skepticism of espoused remorse and spiritual avowals is easyin the face of high recidivism rates. Yet, the English and Welsh PrisonService mission statement and vision are rehabilitative as well as punitive. Ithas an ambiguous history of moral re-education and attempts at spiritualenlightenment from the Victorians onwards.

The Prison Service cannot seek to proselytize while it rehabilitates; itwould even be illegal, under the terms of the 1952 Prison Act and mightbreach the Human Rights Act, 1998. However, it can provide better,more-dedicated space within the prison regime for active pursuit of reli-gious beliefs, including those other than Christianity. In so doing, it mayhelp those prisoners who already want to change towards leading moreuseful lives.

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Measuring Religion in Prisons: Offenders' Beliefs and Attitudes

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