SOCIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION AND CRIME

KAYHAN MUTLU

ABSTRACT

Conventional crimes, and organize white collar crimes are one of the significant social
problems in our time. This is simply because it disturbs democratization of the societies,
and violates human rights principles. Also, the consequences of crimes introduce
victimizations, and the offenders who follow the ways of living by violating legal rules
and moral-ethical values of the society. On the other hand, sociologically speaking, we
see that causes of the crimes are mostly independent of education, income, occupations,
family and neighborhood environments, if we particularly consider the causes for
organised-corporate-white collar crimes. The assumption above is also supported by
the international total crimes statistics which show, mostly industrialized well-fare
societies have very high crime rates than poor third world countries. Thus, in this
study, I argue, there is a need to study sociological functions of religious culture, since
it provides significant informal social control mechanisms standing against criminal
and immoral human actions, in the societies. The data were collected in 1998 (N=380)
and in 2002 (N=435) from the university students, including the School of Theology in
Ankara, by following non-probability purpose sampling procedure, since I tried to reach
those students, some of whom have high, and the other some have low level of religious
socializations. The findings of the two sets of the data show that religious culture,
particularly in a religious environment, relatively speaking, strongly rejects the ways of
living which violate legal rules and moral-ethical values. On the other hand, the findings
of the data collected in 2002 show that religiosity or/and acceptance of essential religious
values, on the one hand, and on the other hand, rational value system of the subjects to
save individuals’ personal material securities, could be major sources for informal social
control system, independently from each other.