Atheists And Believers In American Prisons: Atheists Are Markedly Under-represented

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." 
Devout Christian, Blaise Pascal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
By Rod SwiftI have expanded the figures to provide a % of the total respondents, and I have ranked them (they were presented to me alphabetically). These stats were obtained from their computer on 5 March 1997.



Dear Mr. Swift:

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%).

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http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm