LifeSiteNews:

A new study has found that marriage can potentially help reduce crime because married people tend to develop significantly greater self-control.

“Self-control is one of the strongest predictors of differences between people in terms of their involvement in crime,” said Dr. Walter Forrest, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Australia’s Monash University, in a press release from Monash University.

“Our study shows that improvements in a person’s level of self-control are related to changes in their involvement in crime over time. It also shows that marriage is a significant source of those improvements,” said Dr. Forrest.

The researchers used data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) in order to test “empirical associations between the occurrence of key life events such as marriage, employment, and military service, and desistance from crime.”