Why Prisoners in facilities tend to be higher in Atheists than Atheists would like to believe!

Prison Incarceration and Religious Preference

Links
Response to "Christians vs atheists in prison investigation" - Commonly-circulated atheist "article" about atheism and incarceration is actually from a 1925 document of doubtful validity written by Dale Clark.
Religious Affiliation in Prison, England and Wales (real statistics)
"Theists vs. Nontheists" In Prison Populations: A False Dichotomy
Practicing Faith Benefits Everyone - from Nov/Dec 2001 issue of Correctional News, official newsletter of the California Department of Corrections
This document discusses some of the statistics available pertaining to prison incarceration and religious affiliation. This is not an in-depth study. Accurate, reliable statistics on this subject may not be readily available. Statistics (reliable or not) have been used by various writers to support two different, contradictory conclusions.

Specific religious groups show different levels of correlation with incarceration, although there are multiple reasons for this. Members of some religious groups are more likely to commit crimes and be imprisoned, resulting in a higher incarceration rate. Figures such as these may be related to religious culture, but may also be related to other demographic variables, such as geographical region (certain states have higher incarceration rates), economic status, race, etc. Also, some religious groups show higher rates of incarceration than found in the general population because of their heavy emphasis on prison ministry and higher level of success in prison-based recruitment (e.g., general Muslims, Nation of Islam, Scientologists).



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Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 1999
Source: Peggy Fikac. "More prison inmates say they're Baptist than any other religion." Associated Press (The Abilene Reporter-News)
Baptist 39,781 30.3%
Unknown* 28,890 22.0%
Catholic 23,637 18.0%
Other 39,009 29.7%
-------- ------- ------
Total 131,316 100.0%

* Unknown: "22 percent are categorized as 'unknown,' representing inmates who didn't say or didn't care when asked for their religious denomination." Most of these would be classified functionally in the "nonreligious" category.

* Other: "The rest of the inmates are divided among the categories of Christian Church, Methodist, Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Muslim, Protestant, Jewish, non-denominational, no religious preference and other."


The passage below [source: Christine Wicker. "Dumbfounded by divorce" in Dallas Morning News, 2000; URL: http://195.7.48.75/release/new/dallas/morning/dallasreligion/p1s5m.htm] is indicative of how prevalent it is for people to cite a religious preference, even if they are not religious:

There might be... reason to question Mr. Barna's survey and many other studies of religious people the hazards of self-identification.

Bill Johnson... and his second wife, Donna, co-teach Rebuilders, Prestonwood Baptist's ministry to remarried couples... Mr. Johnson is also a therapist and federal probation officer. His work experience has caused him to note that it's awfully popular to be Baptist. "When I interview criminals going into prison or coming out of prison, most of them are Baptists," he said, laughing. "Everybody seems to be a Baptist, even if they're not religious or Christian."


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National Census of the Jail Population, 1995
According to the DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics (National Census of the Jail Population 12/31/95), while 72% affirmed affiliation with religious institutions (determined through answers to the question on "Religious Background" on the Penal entrance form) only 54% of Federal and State Prisoners actually consider themselves religious, and 33% can be confirmed to be practicing their religion. This is demonstrated by attendance records at religious services, which averaged anywhere between 30% and 40%, depending upon the time of year and the institution in question (and who was preaching). These figures are comparable to the national average as establish by the Gallup organization. [Source: Response to "Christians vs atheists in prison investigation".]

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Prison Incarceration and Religious Preference
Futher Information
Link: Response to "Christians vs atheists in prison investigation" - Commonly-circulated atheist "article" about atheism and incarceration is actually from a 1925 document of doubtful validity written by Dale Clark.
This document discusses some of the statistics available pertaining to prison incarceration and religious affiliation. Specific religious groups show different levels of correlation with incarceration, although there are multiple reasons for this. Members of some religious groups are more likely to commit crimes and be imprisoned, resulting in a higher incarceration rate. But some religious groups show higher rates of incarceration than found in the general population because of their heavy emphasis on prison ministry and higher level of success in prison-based recruitment (e.g., general Muslims, Nation of Islam, Scientologists).




Possible Recent Statistics For a Fraction of U.S. Prisoners
David Rice has written to us (23 October 2002) concerning the origin of the data in the table below:
The data came from Denise Golumbaski, who was a Research Analyst for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The data was compiled from up-to-the-day figures on March 5th, 1997. (Note that as of the year 1999, Analyst Golumbaski is no longer working for the Federal Bureau of Prisons; I had telephoned Analyst Golumbaski to request the latest figures, and was told by another analyst that Golumbaski was no longer employed there.) The data was requested by Mr. Rod Swift, who passed it on to me for my web site. I later called the Federal Bureau of Prisons and confirmed that the data did in fact come from their database.

Catholic 29,267 31.432%
Protestant 26,162 28.097%
None/Atheist/Unknown 18,537 19.908%
Muslim 5,435 5.837%
American Indian 2,408 2.586%
Nation of Islam 1,734 1.862%
Rastafarian 1,485 1.595%
Jewish 1,325 1.423%
Church of Christ 1,303 1.399%
Pentecostal 1,093 1.174%
Moorish 1,066 1.145%
Buddhist 882 0.947%
Jehovah's Witnesses 665 0.714%
Adventist 621 0.667%
Eastern Orthodox 375 0.403%
Latter-day Saints 298 0.320%
Scientology 190 0.204%
Hindu 119 0.128%
Santeria 117 0.126%
Sikh 14 0.015%
Baha'i 9 0.010%
ISKCON 7 0.008%
-------------------- ------ --------
Total 93,112 100.000%




This table, presented in the original format as sent by Rice and as found in the Rod Swift article, is below.


Groups listed above which are believed to have high rates of successful prison ministry-based recruitment
(their stated religious affiliation generally came after incarceration):
Muslim
Nation of Islam
Moorish
Scientology


Note that in the year 2000 the total incarcerated population in the U.S., including federal prisons (statistics shown above), as well as state prisons, jails, etc., was approximately 2 million. The figures shown above may represent only about 4.65% of the total incarcerated population.
Source: Data provided by Denise Golumbaski, Research Analyst, Federal Bureau of Prisons as presented in Rod Swift. "The results of the Christians vs atheists in prison investigation" (URL: http://holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm, as viewed 5 September 2000).

We are aware of two non-academic web pages, featuring commentary by self-described atheists, which attempt to present statistics in such a way as to indicate that religion leads to crime and incarceration. Some of these statements are addressed here, but that is not the focus of this page. Such a notion hardly requires refutation: available statistics, academic studies (as opposed to positional essays by atheists), and common experience attest otherwise.

Religious proponents, on the other hand, often use statistics relating to religiosity to show that religious participation prevents crime and incarceration.

The statistically verifiable reality should come as no surprise to those who have first hand experience with criminal and religious sociology:


1. The majority of Americans (85%) have a stated religious preference.
2. The majority of American prisoners (between 80 and 100%, depending on the study consulted) also have a stated religious preference.

3. A disproportionately high number of prisoners were not in any way practicing religionists prior to incarceration. That is, they exhibited none of the standard sociological measures of religiosity, such as regular prayer, scripture study, and attendance at worship services.

Thus, some commentators on one side have claimed that being religious is associated with incarceration. This is based only on religious preference statistics. American sociologists are well aware that nearly all Americans profess a religious preference. But there is a major difference between those who are actually religious affiliated, that is, members of a congregation (approx. 45 to 65% of the population, varying by region), and those who merely profess a preference, likely the name of the denomination that their parents of grandparents were a part of. (One of the best discussions of this phenomenon can be found in The Churching of America, 1776-1990, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark; New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.)

Commentators supportive of religious involvement invariably point to participation in religion (being affiliated), rather than having a stated (and quite possibly meaningless) religious preference as showing being a statistically strong deterent to crime.


According to the DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics (National Census of the Jail Population 12/31/95), while 72% affirmed affiliation with religious institutions (determined through answers to the question on "Religious Background" on the Penal entrance form) only 54% of Federal and State Prisoners actually consider themselves religious, and 33% can be confirmed to be practicing their religion. This is demonstrated by attendance records at religious services, which averaged anywhere between 30% and 40%, depending upon the time of year and the institution in question (and who was preaching). These figures are comparable to the national average as establish by the Gallup organization. [Source: http://www.errantskeptics.org/Ancient_Statistics.htm.]
Attempts to "prove" either simplistic statement: "Religion leads to incarceration" or "Religion prevents incarceration" are polemical in nature and are neither academic in their approach nor statistially supportable. Neither statement is completely true, and both statements ignore the extremely large differences between religions. Each religious affiliation exhibits different statistical properties relating to incarceration. The actual situation in America can no more be summed up by a discussion of "atheists in prison vs. non-atheists in prison" than by analysis of "Buddhists in prison vs. non-Buddhists in prison."

One atheist web page (http://holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm) presented statistics stating that 0.209% of federal prisoners (in 1997) stated "atheist" as their religious preference. This site said that this is far less than the 8 to 16% of the American population that are atheists.

The atheist site, however, provided no source for the notion that "8 to 16%" of Americans are atheists. This statistic is completely without support from the available data. Gallup polls which include questions about religion have consistently shown that between 93 and 96% of Americans say that they believe in God. Presumably atheist writers would not suggest that up to half of their claimed "atheists" believe in God. The actual proportion of atheists in the United States is about 0.5% (half of one percent). This is the figure obtained from the largest survey of religious preference ever conducted: the National Survey of Religious Identification (Kosmin, 1990), which polled 113,000 people. The religious preference questions were part of questioning completely unrelated to religious preference (consumer preferences, entertainment, etc.), so the frequent retort of atheists that their numbers don't like to admit to atheism, and hence are undercounted, is unlikely.

Still, if one accepts as accurate the estimate that 0.209% of federal prisoners, this is still an incarceration rate only one half of their numbers in the general population.

The high estimates of "8 to 16%" of Americans being atheists are actually produced by combining figures from non-atheist groups. Basically, all people who don't profess a religious preference are sometimes claimed by atheists part of their grouping. The Kosmin survey of 1990 indicated that 1.5% of the population is agnostic, and 7.5% "nonreligious." "Nonreligious" does not mean the same thing as "atheist." It is a classification which includes people who believe there is no god, believe there is a god, or who don't believe either way, or believe that such information is unknowable. Grouping "nonreligious" along with atheists and agnostics, one would obtain a figure of 9.5%. This fits within the claimed "8 to 16%" figure provided for the total number of "atheists."

It is true that, historically, the word "atheist" has been used to include agnostics as well as atheists, and that it has been used to include "nonreligious" as well. But the word has also been used to include many people whose religious preferences conflict with the majority, including Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Wiccans, and others. After the Protestant reformation, Catholic writers used the word "atheist" interchangeably with "infidel", referring to all Protestants (whether Anglican, Baptist, or otherwise) as "atheists."

Today in the United States, "nontheist" does not mean "nonreligious", as indicated by the fact that all but 5% of the population professes belief in God, while approximately 9.5% of the population belong to nonreligious or "antireligious" categories.

In the federal prisoner statistics, a full 20% of the respondents either answered "none" or provided no response to the question on religious affiliation. Based on response patterns to similar questions on nationwide surveys, it is likely that all or nearly all of these persons would be in the "nonreligious" category (or the "atheists" category, to use the terminology from the atheist web page itself). Even without adding the ".209%" of the population that specifically identified themselves as atheists, the segment of the prison population which self-identifies as non-religious is approximately twice as large as found in the general population.

However, a valid argument could be made that the prison population may exhibit different response patterns pertaining to questions of religious identification than the non-prison population. An atheist pundit may believe that this difference is so extreme, that all 20% classified as "none" or "unknown" are actually Christians, Jews, etc., but were being beligerant or evasive in not saying so. A religious pundit might assume that all 20% are actually non-religious.

Sociologists and statisticians can not make absolute conclusions about this group, but based on previous experience with similar studies, the response patterns to this question are unlikely to differ significantly from the general population, and the "nonreligious" segment of the prison population does indeed seem significantly higher than the religious segment. Furthermore, academic researchers are likely to include additional measures of behavior and religiosity beyond mere religious self-identification, and conclude that although the segment of the prison population which specifies a religious preference is as high as in the general population, the proportion of practicing religionists (immediately prior to incarceration) is much lower.

Virtually any article in an academic, peer-reviewed sociology journal that addresses religious behavior and criminal behavior finds that religious behaviors such as church attendance, prayer, home observances, etc., are either negatively correlated to criminal and/or anti-social behavior (drug use, school drop-outs, etc.), or have no correlation. In other words, according to social scientists, religious behavior is associated with lower rates of criminal behavior.

Religious proponents may be less pleased at the studies of religious behavior that indicate that even nominal measures of religious behavior lag far behind religious identification. As mentioned earlier, simply stating a "religious preference" in answer to a survey question may mean nother other than that the respondent remembers the religious preference of a parent or grandparent. A respondent answering "Presbyterian" to a question may attend church every week, in addition to helping at a church-sponsored literacy program for 3 hours every Wednesday, praying daily, having a particularly forgiving heart, and studying the Bible almost daily. Or they may have never been inside any church, except to attend weddings and funerals, since they were ten, when their mom dropped them off at a Sunday children's program almost every week for 8 months straight, saying "We're Presbyterians. I want you to learn what that means." The "self-identified" Presbyterian may fit into either of these categories. One of these categories is not expected by sociologists to have any affect whatsoever on behavior.

A sociologically more meaningful measure of religious participation, as Finke and Stark point out, is religious affiliation, that is, a count of people actually on church rolls. For most religious organizations, the numbers of affiliated members or congregants provided by the churches is smaller than the number of people who identify with a particular group in surveys. For instance, nearly twice as many people in the United States say they are Episcopalian in surveys than actually are on the rolls of Episcopalian churches. These are non-affiliated Episcopalians. They still have a place for Episcopalianism in their identities, but they are not likely to contribute financially to Episcopalian churches or attend them. Some religious groups have affiliation numbers which are very close to self-identification numbers (for example: Latter-day Saints and Seventh-day Adventists). A few religious organizations report higher numbers than actually claim to be adherents in surveys. In general, however, affiliation is a subset of self-identified adherents. Nationally, about 60% of the U.S. population is affiliated. The states with the highest proportion of affiliation are Utah (75%), Rhode Island and North Dakota. The states with the lowest affiliation rates are Oregon and Washington.

But affiliation just indicates names registered with a religious organization. These may include fully participating or completely non-participating individuals, but at least they are people who are presumed to be known by the organization.

Sociologically, a more meaningful measure of religiosity than affiliation is church attendance. Nationally, about 50% of the U.S. population claims to have attended worship services during the previous week in response to Gallup polls. This roughly indicates the proportion of the population which considers themselves regular churchgoers. More detailed sociological studies involving counting actual participation in all churches and religious meeting places on successive weekends and comparing results to census data indicate that during any given week, approximately 25% to 30% of Americans attend a worship service.

Attendance at worship services is not the only indication of religiosity, of course. Other behaviors, such as prayer, religious study in the home, charitable giving to religious organizations, volunteerism, etc. are other frequently used measures of religiosity.

Other studies mirror the data provided here, including one in which about half of Americans indicated they were either essentially not religious at all (regardless of whether or not they had a religious preference), or only nominally religious.

From a functional standpoint, a case could be made for an assertion that half of the U.S. population are "functionally atheists." That is, although they may profess belief in God, their behavior is unmodified in any way because of such a belief. They exhibit patterns of marriage, language, entertainment choice, voting, sexual behavior, charitable giving, employment, education, etc. which are indistinguishable from essentially non-practicing "religionists" of other faiths, or of the self-identified nonreligious population.

That religious behavior lags far behind identification will come as no surprise to those critical of religion. They might point that if all 75% of the U.S. population which claims in self-identification surveys to be Christian actually lived according to Christian teachings, there would probably not be 2 million incarcerated people in the country. About 0.72% of the U.S. population is currently incarcerated. This is the highest figure of any industrialized nation, except perhaps Russia. Federal prison statistics clearly show that these individuals do not come only from the approximately 25% of the population who consider themselves non-Christian. Indeed, all religious groups with statistically significant strength are represented in U.S. prisons.

A full appreciation of how religion relates to incarceration rates is impossible unless one examines the different incarceration rates for different religious groups.


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"Theists vs. Nontheists" In Prison Populations: A False Dichotomy
There is no sociologically valid basis for comparing "theists to nontheists" with regards to incarceration rates (or any other sociological measure) because "theists" do not constitute an identifiable social group. The fact that non-practicing (functionally nonreligious) people are highly over-represented among prisoners is a separate issue, apart from questions relating to belief and philosophical position.
To consider incarceration rates of "atheists" vs. "theists" is like comparing Hispanics to non-Hispanics. While it may be possible to group figures that way, it doesn't make a lot of sense to do so. Non-Hispanics are better broken down into Asians, African-Americans and Whites (if one doesn't further break them down by other factors such as age, education, etc.) Likewise, it makes no sense to group all non-atheists together, as if Amish, Muslims, Quakers, Baha'is, Hindus, Presbyterians, Orthodox Jews, Baptists, Deists, Lutherans, Unitarians, Rastafarians, Wiccans, etc., all exhibited similar behavior. Obviously some of these groups exhibit relatively little criminal behavior, while others would exhibit relatively more criminal behavior. Certain crimes are more prevalent among certain groups. 85% of Americans cite a specific religious affiliation. So if you combine figures for people of all religious affiliations you get essentially the same figure that you would get for the whole U.S. population. The figure would only be different if essentially all religious groups were skewed in one direction, which they are not.

A person's philosophical position about the existence of God is distinct from that person's ethical behavior. A person's position on this single point is not a predictor of ethical or criminal behavior, any more than a person's preference for country vs. rock music. Atheism does not necessarily equate to criminal or unethical behavior, just as a professed belief in God does not necessarily preclude criminal or unethical behavior.

One problem faced by some religious writers as well as some atheist writers who have tried to equate religious belief or atheism with criminal behavior (and probably a major reason why there is no empirical data to support either contention) is that a person's philosophical position on this one point is not the major factor in determining criminal behavior. Factors such as level of income, employment/non-employment, level of education, race, geographical region, age, sex, etc. are all tracked by the government and other organizations. All of these characteristics correlate more readily to criminal behavior. (GLBT status, on the other hand, has not been shown to correlate generally to incarceration rate, although it is highly correlated with pedophilia. According to gay researchers Karla Jay and Allen Young, 73 percent of the gay men they report having engaged in sex with boys 16 to 19 years of age or younger; 86 percent of convicted child molesters who molested boys describe themselves as homosexual or bisexual. See also: World Net Daily article; More)

There is no monolithic group of "theists." This is a term that describes a philosophical position (as identified by atheists), not a self-identifying group of people. People may congregate with other Catholics, other Muslims, other hockey fans at a sports event, other Stephen King fans at a book club, other mothers at a play group, other gays at a bar, etc. but "theists" do not come together as a single group, and do not exhibit an identifiable pattern of social behavior. Likewise, atheists are not a monolithic group, and most atheists are not formally affiliated with any organization based on their atheism. Like theists, atheists are found among all races, ages, levels of income, religions, etc., and those factors are going to correlate far more readily to statistically predictable patterns of social behavior, including levels of incarceration.


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Appendix: 1997 Federal Bureau of Prisons from Denise Golumbaski, as formatted in Rice/Swift
Note that in this version, the names of a couple of religious groups remain non-standardized, and self-identified "Atheist" remains separate from "Unknown/None."
Response Number %
---------------------------- --------
Catholic 29267 39.164%
Protestant 26162 35.008%
Muslim 5435 7.273%
American Indian 2408 3.222%
Nation 1734 2.320%
Rasta 1485 1.987%
Jewish 1325 1.773%
Church of Christ 1303 1.744%
Pentecostal 1093 1.463%
Moorish 1066 1.426%
Buddhist 882 1.180%
Jehovah Witness 665 0.890%
Adventist 621 0.831%
Orthodox 375 0.502%
Mormon 298 0.399%
Scientology 190 0.254%
Atheist 156 0.209%
Hindu 119 0.159%
Santeria 117 0.157%
Sikh 14 0.019%
Bahai 9 0.012%
Krishna 7 0.009%
---------------------------- --------
Total Known Responses 74731 100.001% (rounding to 3 digits does this)

Unknown/No Answer 18381
----------------------------
Total Convicted 93112 80.259% (74731) prisoners' religion is known.

Held in Custody 3856 (not surveyed due to temporary custody)
----------------------------
Total In Prisons 96968



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Web page created 5 September 2000. Last modified 19 April 2007.

Religion of Prisoners Discussion, Page 2

This document includes newsgroup postings discussing documents that purport to present statistics relating to the religious affiliation of prisoners. An example of such a document is: The results of the Christians vs atheists in prison investigation

As the discussion below makes clear, these particular sets of prisoner religious "statistics" are either very old (dating to 1925) or simply fictitious.

Although the articles being debunked here were written by atheists, it should be pointed out that most atheists are quite opposed to such blatant attempts at propaganda through deception. Furthermore, these prison-related articles do not reflect the level of academic scholarship present in leading atheist/skeptical publications.

The original URL for this file was: http://www.errantskeptics.org/Ancient_Statistics.htm



Subject: Re: Good-bye, Good Riddance
Date: Fri, 17 September 1999 08:09 AM EDT
From: Kornform
Message-id: <19990917080914.01588.00000213@ng-ch1.aol.com

Arialle: I never said Christians are over-represented. However, if say, 8% of the population is atheistic and only 2 % of them are in prisons, that's under-represented. Kornforn presented this evidence (and I have it somewhere) which was in Free Inquiry, I believe, and it showed that atheists and Jews were under-represented in prisons. Do you still have this, Korn?

K: Here is a copy of what Hypatia SM posted:

Subject: STUDIES: ATHEISTS SUPPLY LESS THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS
Date: Wed, Mar 24, 1999 2:47 PM
From: Hypatia SM
Message-id: <19990324144750.02274.00000947@ng148.aol.com

STUDIES: ATHEISTS SUPPLY LESS THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS
by Wayne Aiken, North Carolina Director
AMERICAN ATHEISTS

It's surprising how many people remark to me, "You're an Atheist? You must have no conscience about committing crime then." Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if we examine the population of our prisons, we see a very different picture.

In "The New Criminology," Max D. Schlapp and Edward E. Smith say that two generations of statisticians found that the ratio of convicts without religious training is about 1/10th of 1%. W.T. Root, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, examined 1,916 prisoners and said, "Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character," adding that Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and Free-Thinkers were absent from penitentiaries, or nearly so.

During 10 years in Sing-Sing, of those executed for murder 65% were Catholics, 26% Protestants, 6% Hebrew, 2% Pagan, and less than 1/3 of 1% non-religious.

Steiner and Swancara surveyed Canadian prisons and found 1,294 Catholics, 435 Anglicans, 241 Methodists, 135 Baptists, and 1 Unitarian.

Dr. Christian, Superintendent of the N.Y. State Reformatories, checked records of 22,000 prison inmates and found only 4 college graduates. In "Who's Who," 91% were college graduates; Christian commented that "intelligence and knowledge produce right living," and, "crime is the offspring of superstition and ignorance."

Surveyed Massachusetts reformatories found every inmate to be religious.

In Joliet Prison, there were 2,888 Catholics, 1,020 Baptists, 617 Methodists and no prisoners identified as non-religious.

Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in the state population; but in the prisons, there were 22 times as many Baptists as Jews, and 18 times as many Methodists as Jews. In Sing-Sing, there were 1,553 inmates, 855 of them (over half) Catholics, 518 Protestants, 117 Jews, and 8 non-religious.

Steiner first surveyed 27 states and found 19,400 Christians, 5,000 with no preference and only 3 Agnostics (one each in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Illinois). A later, more exhaustive survey found 60,605 Christians, 5,000 Jews, 131 Pagans, 4,000 "no preference," and only 3 Agnostics.

In one 19-state survey, Steiner found 15 non-believers, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Deists, Pantheists and 1 Agnostic among nearly 83,000 inmates. He labeled all 15 as "anti-christians." The Elmira, N.Y. reformatory system overshadowed all others, with nearly 31,000 inmates, including 15,694 Catholics (half) and 10,968 Protestants, 4,000 Jews, 325 refusing to answer, and 0 unbelievers.

In the East, over 64% of inmates are Roman Catholic. Throughout the national prison population, they average 50%. A national census of the general population found Catholics to be about 15% (and they count from the diaper up). Hardly 12% are old enough to commit a crime, and half of these are women. That leaves an adult Catholic population of 6% supplying 50% of the prison population.
[end quote]

Subject: Religion in Prison
Date: Mon, 20 September 1999 12:41 PM EDT
From: Rev Neal


STUDIES: ATHEISTS SUPPLY LESS THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS
by Wayne Aiken, North Carolina Director
AMERICAN ATHEISTS

I remember reading this and posting an answer to it somewhere back in the dim misty recesses of the past. I don't remember what I wrote then, and I didn't save my post, but I DO know what I think now. Here are a few thoughts in response to this article, and what it both does and does not demonstrate:

(a) During 10 years in Sing-Sing, of those executed for murder 65% were Catholics, 26% Protestants, 6% Hebrew, 2% Pagan, and less than 1/3 of 1% non-religious.

QUESTION: Which 10 year period? What are the dates of this study and of these figures? Why are there no Muslims in this figure? In 1995, 48% of the prison population was African American, and Black Muslims currently make up better than 25% of the African American Prison Population (DOJ figures 12/31/95), with 21 Masques currently in full-time use in some Federal and State Prisons. A disproportionally large percentage of persons executed in the last 10 years have been African Americans, and this ethnic group has seen a major surge in Muslim membership. If your figures are current, I find it hard to believe that NONE of those executed at Sing-Sing were Black Muslims.

(b) Steiner and Swancara surveyed Canadian prisons and found 1,294 Catholics, 435 Anglicans, 241 Methodists, 135 Baptists, and 1 Unitarian.

QUESTION: You have listed no followers of Native American religious traditions, and yet in the United States the DOJ reports 32 Native American religious Lodges; are we to assume, with the large Native Peoples population of Canada, that the Canadians make no provisions for their Native American population and their religious practices?? What about Presbyterians? How about people of other faiths, like Wiccans or Muslims, who are indeed represented in Prisons in the United States even though substantially ignored in your report; are there none in Canada? Also, the United Methodist and British Methodist Churches no longer exist in Canada ... it was merged into the United Church of Canada, along with several other denominations. Hence, these figures are quite probably rather old and, more than likely, reflect religious background preferences and not religious practices.

(c) Dr. Christian, Superintendent of the N.Y. State Reformatories, checked records of 22,000 prison inmates and found only 4 college graduates. In "Who's Who," 91% were college graduates; Christian commented that "intelligence and knowledge produce right living," and, "crime is the offspring of superstition and ignorance."

QUESTION: According to DOJ, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Special Report, 6/4/98) the national prison population sports 14.1% college graduates. According to this national figure, there should be -- on average -- 3100 college graduates among those 22,000 prison inmates in NY State Reformatories. 4 out of 22,000 is remarkably low ... so far outside of statistical probability as to leave one rather surprised. Dr.
Christian's conclusions, which he draws, are interesting ... but are reflective of his opinion, not scientific data.

Also, according to the DOJ, Bureau of Justice Statistics (National Census of the Jail Population 12/31/95), the New York Prison System had 66,489 prisoners. Either Dr. Christian isn't counting the entire prison population, or these figures are horribly out of date.

(d) Surveyed Massachusetts reformatories found every inmate to be religious. In Joliet Prison, there were 2,888 Catholics, 1,020 Baptists, 617 Methodists and no prisoners identified as non-religious.

QUESTION: According to the DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics (National Census of the Jail Population 12/31/95), while 72% affirmed affiliation with religious institutions (determined through answers to the question on "Religious Background" on the Penal entrance form) only 54% of Federal and State Prisoners actually consider themselves religious, and 33% can be confirmed to be practicing their religion. This is demonstrated by attendance records at religious services, which averaged anywhere between 30% and 40%, depending upon the time of year and the institution in question (and who was preaching). These figures are comparable to the national average as establish by the Gallup organization.

Also ... were there no Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Muslims, Jews, Native American religious, or Wiccans at Joliet? According to the DOJ, Joliet is listed as one of the Prisons having a Mosque on its grounds, and an Imam on the Adjunct Chaplain staff. They wouldn't need either if all they had were Catholics and Protestants.

(e) Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in the state population; but in the prisons, there were 22 times as many Baptists as Jews, and 18 times as many Methodists as Jews.

QUESTION: that's impressive ... in a state with no Methodists (none are listed in the first clause of the sentence), they still managed to have 18 times as many Methodists than Jews in prison??? I KNOW, I KNOW ... there are Methodists in Michigan. A LOT of Methodists. However, the poor quality of this article can be seen in the shoddy way that these figures are being presented.

(e2) In Sing-Sing, there were 1,553 inmates, 855 of them (over half) Catholics, 518 Protestants, 117 Jews, and 8 non-religious.

QUESTION: No Muslims? No Wiccans? No Native Americans? No Eastern Orthodox? No Hindu? Nothing but Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and 8 non-religious? With the Black Muslim Population being 25% of the African American Prison Population nation wide, one would expect at least ONE Muslim at Sing-Sing. Statistically speaking, these figures are looking more and more suspect.

(f) Steiner first surveyed 27 states and found 19,400 Christians, 5,000 with no preference and only 3 Agnostics (one each in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Illinois). A later, more exhaustive survey found 60,605 Christians, 5,000 Jews, 131 Pagans, 4,000 "no preference," and only 3 Agnostics.

QUESTION: Again, no Black Muslims made it into this "exhaustive" survey? Perhaps they were under the "no preference" listing?? Please, don't tell me that they're under the "Pagan" listing ... 131 isn't large enough even for the Native American religions, much less the Nation of Islam ... not in a supposedly "exhaustive" survey across at least 27 states.

Indeed, I find these figures WAY too small given the total prison population in the United States. For example, in an initial survey that is supposed to have covered 27 states, only 19,400 Christians, 5000 without any preference, and 3 Agnostics were found. 3 of the 27 states were apparently Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Illinois, for it is from each of these states that the Agnostics came. However, IN JUST CONNECTICUT, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND ILLINOIS, not counting the 24 other states that were supposedly in this initial survey, there is a combined prison population of 54,473. I hope the problem is obvious to all. If just 3 of the states included in the initial survey -- 2 of them being quite SMALL states -- actually have more than double the totals given for ALL 27 states in the reference survey, then something is seriously wrong with the survey figures. How current are these figures??? Let us take the larger figures from the more "exhaustive survey" and, let us assume that it is the same 27 state survey group ... States from mostly the Northeast and Midwest, with a few States from other regions thrown in for good measure. JUST in the Northeast and Midwest (21 states, total), the DOJ statistics show a 1995 prison population of 355,224. In other words, this "exhaustive" survey -- which found 69,739 inmates -- somehow managed to MISS a whopping 285,485 (80%) of all the inmates ... they only counted 20% of the prison population? I'm very very sorry, but these figures are next to worthless. They are either poorly researched, or horribly out of date.

(g) In one 19-state survey, Stainer found 15 nonbelievers, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Deists, Pantheists and 1 Agnostic among nearly 83,000 inmates.

Which 19 states? New York appears to be one of these 19 states in the survey, and yet New York ALONE had 66,469 prisoners in 1995!

He labeled all 15 as "anti-christians." The Elmira, N.Y. reformatory system overshadowed all others, with nearly 31,000 inmates, including 15,694 Catholics (half) and 10,968 Protestants, 4,000 Jews, 325 refusing to answer, and 0 unbelievers.

QUESTION: 31,000 EVEN inmates??? Did they round the numbers up from the 30,987 figure that those numbers add up to?? Elmira has no Black Muslims??? ... with a 48% African American population in our prisons, and with 42% in the Elmira system????

In the East, over 64% of inmates are Roman Catholic. Throughout the national prison population, they average 50%. A national census of the general population found Catholics to be about 15% (and they count from the diaper up). Hardly 12% are old enough to commit a crime, and half of these are women. That leaves an adult Catholic population of 6% supplying 50% of the prison population.


QUESTION: There are a few things that are remarkably difficult to believe in this above analysis. For instance, the idea that 50% of the prison population is Roman Catholic is particularly hard to believe when one considers that 48% is African American ... African Americans are NOT predominately Roman Catholic. Also, remember that, according to the DOJs own figures, roughly 25% of the African American prison population are members of the Nation of Islam. That should make for a noticeable percentage of the whole. And, yet, Black Muslims make NO appearance in this report. Also, the 15% figure for Roman Catholics in the United States is horribly off. There are more than 60 million Roman Catholics in the United States, which is roughly 24% of the population. Also, why does this study only take into account MALE inmates, and not female inmates as well? Are we really supposed to believe that the half of the RC membership that is female is not going to be capable of committing crimes? This last bit sounds remarkably like a sexist, anti-Catholic diatribe ... and quite anachronistic to say the least.

CONCLUSION:

All of this has lead me to suspect the value of these figures, and certainly any analysis that might be made based upon them. Indeed, so dubious was I of the figures in this article that I spent a while on the Internet trying to trace the article from which these figures were drawn. While I could not find this article on the Internet under the given author, Wayne Aiken, I did find a nearly exact duplicate of this article authored by Dale Clark in ... hold on to yourself ... NOT 1995 ... NOT 1985 ... NOT EVEN 1975 ... but 74 YEARS AGO ... 1925. BIG Oooops. No wonder all of their figures were so horribly off!

I would hope that even Atheists would recognize that 74 year-old figures, such as these, really are not a valid basis for the kinds of conclusions that they have drawn.


Grace and Peace,

Greg+
http://www.gbgm-umc.org/bdumc


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