Research on the relationship between religion and criminal recidivism has produced encouraging but ultimately inconclusive findings. This study offers a new direction for studying the role of religious support in reentry, providing a longitudinal analysis of the effect of change in religious support on both crime and noncrime outcomes postrelease.

Employing mixed-effects longitudinal analyses, this study uses data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative to examine the impact of religious support on postrelease substance use, criminal recidivism, and employment.

Religious support had strong and robust prosocial effects on both postrelease employment and substance use. The relationship between religious support and recidivism, however, did not reach statistical significance when we added social support to the research model.

Religious support and meaning making seems to help people address their criminogenic needs and also seems to be an important responsivity factor that is often overlooked in criminological theory and practice. Religious support must therefore be recognized as an important theoretical and practical variable in current efforts to develop successful reentry pathways.