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[Phys-L] Re: Are Prisoners More Religious? (was: god friendly science)

At 23:12 -0500 5/26/05, Brian Whatcott wrote:
I would like to see one of these uncountably numerous surveys
which demonstrate the increased proportion of deists among
prison populations compared with people at large.

I have contact with inmates weekly, and I have not been [so far]
persuaded of this effect, which would be very pleasant news for
prison administrators faced with extremely high recidivism rates.

They seem to think that the community support which prisoners receive
who are cajoled into church contact, is the only significant factor
they often see which is shown to reduce recidivism.

But they could be mistaken. And I certainly could be mistaken.
This is after all, the Bible-belt. And if Hugh has himself found
from science-based surveys that inmates are more religious
than the general public, then I would need to revise my views.

Here is some data for 1997, purportedly directly from the US Bureau
of Prisons, so i assume it refers to federal prisoners only (I can't
personally vouch for this data since I got it from a third party web
site, but the numbers look pretty much like others that I have seen,
so i suspect it is correct):

The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have statistics on religious
affiliations of inmates. The following are total number of
inmates per religion category:

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


I hope that this information is helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Denise Golumbaski
Research Analyst
Federal Bureau of Prisons

Assuming that the data is correct, and considering that the measured
frequency of atheism in the general population is 8-15% (depending on
how the question is asked and how the responses are grouped by the
collecting organization), we can see that the likelihood of an
atheist ending up in prison is about 2% of that of a Christian in the
US, give or take some.

I would like to see some data (I haven't, so far) about countries
where the fraction of atheists in the population is much greater
(Netherlands, for example), to see if this disparity still holds.

As I said before, This data does not prove that atheists are more
moral people than Christians. There are lots of reasons why the
results may be as they are that have nothing to do with relative
morality of different groups. It is also true that the conditions are
such in many prisons that prisoners who profess religion get better
treatment than those who do not (as long as the religion they profess
conforms to what the prison officials see as a "legitimate" one), so
there may be a fraction of "jailhouse conversions" in the data above
that can distort the results.

I make no claims about this data showing that atheists are inherently
better people than Christians, only that the data is certainly not
consistent with claims that Christians are more moral than atheists.

There is no doubt that there are examples of people who found
religion after they committed a crime turning their lives around.
That happens with drunks and drug addicts as well. And it is probably
not so likely that such things will happen to people who become
atheists. My observations over the years indicate that people who
"find" religion are mostly theists of some sort beforehand (or people
who, for one reason or another, renounced religion at some earlier
time, but felt they needed the support of religion to stay on the
"straight and narrow"), and were just looking for something to hang
their hat on. Atheists seldom come to their belief (or "lack of
belief") suddenly. It is usually a gradual process, and if most of
those I know are any indication, those who come to it from a strong
religious background frequently get there as a result of their
revulsion at the apparent immorality and hypocrisy of the religious
people (esp. the leaders) they come in contact with. It's not that
they become better people when they renounce religion, but that they
were already good people who realize that they don't need religion to
keep them "good."

But I do wonder why, if God helped the poor souls get out of their
predicament, why did She let them get into it in the first place? And
why does She not keep everyone out of these situations? Especially
those in which the victim of the crime is a "God-fearing" religious
soul, who certainly doesn't deserve the treatment he or she gets at
the hands of the criminal. And why, if atheism breeds immorality, so
few atheists do end up in jail? As I said above, there may be good
reasons for this; still the disparity is so huge, one has to wonder.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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