If okps don't like te study result, the science is no good... But here you go.

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Give me that Old Time Religion…to reduce crime
By Dr. Jeff Mirus (bio - articles - email) | Jul 27, 2011
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Sociologist Byron Johnson has marshaled conclusive evidence that Church attendance is associated with reduced crime and delinquency. Johnson, who is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University, summarized his findings in an article entitled “The Religious Antidote” (First Things, August/September 2011).

Byron has both conducted studies himself and reviewed the studies of others. An early study (1986) by Richard Freeman examined housing projects in several major cities to determine factors that helped kids stay out of trouble. Religious faith was a key factor. Byron, working with several colleagues, replicated Freeman’s study in the late 1990’s, with the same result: The frequency of attending religious services was inversely related to the likelihood of young, poor, black males selling illegal drugs or otherwise breaking the law. The differences in getting into legal trouble between those who attended church and those who did not were on the order of 40 to 60 percent.

In 2000, Byron reviewed forty studies on the relationship between religion and delinquency, with similar results. The same was true of a review of sixty studies by Colin Baier and Bradley Wright in 2001, which further demonstrated that the inverse relationship between church attendance and delinquent behavior increased as studies grew larger and more comprehensive.

Very recently, Byron completed the most exhaustive systematic review to date, analyzing 273 studies published between 1944 and 2010 in a variety of fields. He found that 90% of the studies “report an inverse or beneficial relationship between religion and some measure of crime or delinquency.” Only 9 percent found no association, and only two studies (less than 1%) found the opposite relationship.

Professor Byron began his article by noting that if the studies generally showed the opposite—that religion or church-going contributed to crime and delinquency—the press would be all over the story, and a Federal commission would doubtless be established to make sure Americans were officially notified that religious practice is deleterious to your social health.