Religiosity, religious climate, and delinquency among ethnic groups in the Netherlands

In this paper the effect of religiosity on delinquent behavior is examined for Moroccan, Turkish, Surinamese (subdivided into Hindustani, Creoles, and Javanse), and Dutch boys. It is proposed that religion can be considered as an element of the social bond. Next, the distinction between moral and secular communities introduced by Stark, et al. (1982) is applied to the ethnic groups, leading to the conclusion that Moroccans and Turks live in moral communities, while the Dutch live in a secular community. The results show that there is a modet relation between religiosity and delinquent behaviour in some groups, but the distinction between moral and secular communities does not help to explain these relations. Socio-economic background variables appear to be unrelated to religiosity. Finally, some comments are presented on the characterization of communities as moral or secular. It is concluded that it may be necessary to have additional information on the social networks in a community to find an explanation of the relation between religiosity and delinquency that is applicable to different cultures.