Well I have to admit I've just spent an hour on google and the results aren't good. The only pages that seem to have anything on the USA prison stats are here:
http://www.holysmoke.org/hs00/prison.htm
It is a letter from a person who apparently did a survey in 1997, although there are no sources mentioned. Another study was this:
http://www.adherents.com/misc/adh_prison.html
It has details from 1999 that say 22% (listed as unknown) have no religion in prison.
What is more astounding is that in the UK, people with "no religion" account for just less than 1/3 of prisoners in a 60,000 person survey. It seems that in the UK, figures are more accurately reflecting the general religious background of the country (where recent studies do show approx 1/3 of the population is non religious.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/fr...w=Standard
I think I'm going to write an article on my blog about this tomorrow! We'll have to stop using this argument. If anything, the stats show that there is no correlation between religion and willingness to commit a crime. So much for both the "atheists make the country immoral" and the "atheists don't commit as many crimes" theories.
http://www.holysmoke.org/hs00/prison.htm
It is a letter from a person who apparently did a survey in 1997, although there are no sources mentioned. Another study was this:
http://www.adherents.com/misc/adh_prison.html
It has details from 1999 that say 22% (listed as unknown) have no religion in prison.
What is more astounding is that in the UK, people with "no religion" account for just less than 1/3 of prisoners in a 60,000 person survey. It seems that in the UK, figures are more accurately reflecting the general religious background of the country (where recent studies do show approx 1/3 of the population is non religious.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/fr...w=Standard
I think I'm going to write an article on my blog about this tomorrow! We'll have to stop using this argument. If anything, the stats show that there is no correlation between religion and willingness to commit a crime. So much for both the "atheists make the country immoral" and the "atheists don't commit as many crimes" theories.
