In sum, these reviews confirm consistent and mounting evidence suggesting increasing religious commitment or involvement helps individuals avoid crime and delinquency. . . .All totaled, this review located 272 studies on religion and crime that were published between 1944 and 2010, making the current systematic review the most extensive to be undertaken on this topic.

. . . .In sum, based on an exhaustive and objective review of 272 studies comprising the religion-crime literature published between 1944 and 2010, there is overwhelming empirical evidence of an inverse relationship between religion and crime. Simply stated, there is clear support for the central thesis of this book: more God equals less crime. In fact, I find that regardless of the methodology employed, the sample selected, or the measures utilized, the faith factor matters in important ways for crime reduction and prevention.

But how do we reconcile the fact that we have such consistent empirical evidence linking religion to crime reduction and yet there remains little acknowledgment of this fact? Two possibilities seem to emerge as reasonable explanations. First, scholars have not done a very good job of communicating these realities to the public at large. Second, persistent stereotypes, anecdotes, and sweeping generalizations of religion as bad seem to be much more newsworthy than do empirical studies that are not readily accessible to the public.