Do you think there more atheist or more believers in our prison system?

Question

I think more believers because reading the bible gives them hope and comfort.

Answer 1

I don't think anyone could answer that question. I'm sure some went in atheist and became a Christian. I doubt if true believers who follow God go to prison much.

Answer 2

Your question doesn't really go with your own answer to it. Your question seems to be asking if atheists or believers are more likely to end up in prison (statistics say believers), but your question seems to be referring to what happens inside. Sorry, even though I'm not in prison, the bible gives me no hope for humanity.

Although a lot of prisoners seems to 'find jesus' because it makes their parole hearings more sucessful. Pretty hypocritical.

Answer 3

A murder in prison cares about or has a need for hope and comfort?

Facts being, most people there are believers, and not just because people hand out bibles, they go in believers...just bad ones that couldn't live how they were supposed to.

Answer 4

Statistics show that there is a much smaller percentage of atheists in the prison population but that could just be because atheists also tend to be much more highly educated and have much higher incomes on the average than theists. Most crimes are committed by poor people with poor education.

Answer 5

I'm not surprised to see the low numbers of atheists in prison. Because atheists don't believe in God, they take responsibility for their own actions, therefore do what's right more often. There's no invisible being or dogma to blame things on.

Answer 6

According to statistics there are more christians by far. holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm has a list.

I think that is a pretty sad commentary on christianity myself.

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



Now, let's just deal with the nasty Christian types, no?

Catholic 29267 39.164%
Protestant 26162 35.008%
Rasta 1485 1.987%
Jewish 1325 1.773%
Church of Christ 1303 1.744%
Pentecostal 1093 1.463%
Jehovah Witness 665 0.890%
Adventist 621 0.831%
Orthodox 375 0.502%
Mormon 298 0.399%

Judeo-Christian Total 62594 83.761% (of the 74731 total responses)
Total Known Responses 74731

Not unexpected as a result. Note that atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less in the prison populations (0.21%).

Answer 7

a no brainer ....percentages and the law of averages dictate the answer is believers. Big deal. people find immediate comfort in the most uncomforting things go figure.

Answer 8

Believers, by far. I can think of a number of reasons for this, but maybe one of the more interesting is that so many convicts are African-American, and atheism is much more rare among that population than it is among, say, caucasians.

Answer 9

Less than one half of one percent <0.5% of prisoners are atheists. I would say that is a big complement to atheists, not Christians.

Answer 10

stats say theistic. Many think atheists are immoral but that is simply not true. We have moral values we derive from ourselves, we don't need a higher diety to have them. You only act "moral" because you are kissing ur God's butt so he doesn't eternally damn you. I call that immoral and just kissing butt. Unfortunatley that immorality can take over sending more of you into jail since the thoughts are not core in yourselves.