[nvn1]

Perhaps the causes or whatever drives people to be religious or criminal are not the same? Perhaps removing criminals from British society was enough to 'reform' a lot of them.The puritans chose to go to the US, I believe.

If we had sent all the criminals to the US and all the puritans to Australia then perhaps the results would have been switched.

[dmm]

A lot of the "criminals" were really just poor people and the puritans chose to go the US largely because nobody in Europe wanted them around.