Appx. 90% of American Criminals in Prison are Christian or Muslim.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

Therefore...

Oh, the roads you can take here.

On edit, I doubt it's the Prison that causes the religiosity.

Discuss?

[rpannier]

1. Impossible...

they all have to be Atheists, agnostics and Unitarians. I mean, without God there is no peace or love

[benburch]

2. We Pagans need to lock up ALL of those Christians and Muslims!

It is a matter of National Security.

[genie_weenie]

24. to bad those Xian fundies

the Teutonic Knights weren't locked up before they stormed Pomerania, my poor pagan ancestors!

[Bill McBlueState]

3. how does that compare to the population at large?

From http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions

% of U.S. Pop., 2000
Christianity 76.5
Islam 0.5

It sounds like Christians and Muslims are more likely to be in prison than those of other faiths.

According to the same data, 0.4% of Americans are atheists. I wonder what percentage of prisoners are atheists.

[Coastie for Truth]

4. Probably zero

Because you materially increase your likelihood of parole or early release by professing a faith that has a prison chaplain.

Does the name Chuck Colson ring a bell.

[jody]

5. That's an interesting stat since Christians are about 78% and Muslims 1%

"Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10%"

Looks like "other" and "none" are the only law abiding citizens in the U.S.

What is the source of your 90% stat?

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

6. JUSTICE QUARTERLY, Vol. 14 No. 1, March 1997

http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/johnson.html

This is just a NY sampling, but I would imagine it is fairly representative.

[jody]

7. Thanks. A 2003 article in CSM said, "If current trends continue, it means

that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17."

It looks like many who profess to be Christians don't practice their faith but they have good role models like Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush. Only Bakker served time.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. I don't know the exact percentage of different relgions in this country

but I'd bet that possibly 90% or close to it are Christians in this nation. Muslims are a distinct minority. I'd bet the percentages you speak of only reflect the percentages in the nation as a whole.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

9. The Percentage of Muslims in the study I took the figures from was

less than 10%.

However, television shows and popular culture would have us believe that it is much higher.

[H2O Man]

10. Oh, please.

I did forensic mental health work, including running groups and doing individual work with the incarcerated for years and years. I think 99% of the inmates became religious the minute they thought it would help them in court or for early release. Less than 5% were religious either before or after incarceration.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

11. The "no atheists in foxholes" rebuttal?

I would guess that the percentages reflected in the cited figures are pretty close to the general population here in the states if not less.

Check out the link above, it was less than 50% that availed themselves of religious programming in prison.

(edited to spell check because I'm a baaaaad speller)

[demosincebirth]

12. Many are converted to islam in the prisons.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Right, case in point:

Malcolm X

[varkam]

13. Hate to say it.

I'm an atheist, and so would love to agree with the implications of the OP - but I have to agree with some of the thoughts already echoed here. The majority of the Americans are religious, and so it naturally follows that the majority of Americans in pris ion will be religious.

Of course, the assumption that I'm making here is one that I've made in another thread, namely that there is *zero* correlation between religious faith (or lack thereof) and moral character.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

14. IMHO, the correlation is there. "Faith" leads to a lack of moral

character.

If there were a lack of religious pressures, there would be a lot more mental health?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. Actually, I believe that's not quite true.

I've seen some statistics with very reliable-looking methodology that, if accurate showed that in America Christians give more to charity and volunteer more than atheists, even when you adjust for wealth, geography etc.

I'm afraid I can't post a link - I've just spent a while unsuccessfully googling for the one I was thinking of - though, so you'd be wise not to give my assertion all that much weight.

I agree with you that this statistic doesn't prove all that much, though.

[varkam]

22. Even if the methodology is sound...

there is still the issue of how they operationalized, i.e. how they chose to define in a quantifiable manner what "morality" is. If they decided to see how many christians vs. atheists volunteered at church-sponsored events and gave to faith-based charity, then yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not saying that's actually how they defined it, but without the study there really isn't much to talk about.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

23. Eureka

It doesn't seem to show up on Google, but I vaguely remembered that the author was called Arthur, and that let me track a link to it down. The source is one that arguably has a vested interest in supporting the claims he reaches, but his methodology does seem solid, and does, for example, take account of religious vs non-religious charities.

http://www.policyreview.org/oct03/brooks.html

[varkam]

27. One good data set...

deserves another. Interesting article, however I do have a couple small problems with it. Firstly, he doesn't delve into his methodology all that much - in fact, of his sample all I read was "...using a large survey conducted in 2000...". Perhaps I missed it, but he didn't seem to expand on that at all - what survey is it? Who was it conducted by? Telephone survey? Mail survey? Who knows.

That aside, Policy Review is not a scientifically rigorous, peer-reviewed journal. In other words, submissions are not reviewed by a selection of the authors peers to examine the soundness of an article. While it sounds good to you and me, a real brass-tacks scientist might have a few issues with it (i.e. the fairly shoddy description of the methodology).

What's more than that is that this is just correlation al data - there's no way to tell whether or not some other third variable influenced the results. In other words, *why* do religious people give more to charities? It could be because they're just better people and secularists are scumbags. It would also be because churches encourage that action (if someone isn't going to go church, they're not getting that encouragement) - that could explain the data as well. Or religious people could me more concerned with their eternal soul than secularists and are pushed harder to do something good. While nice, in my view, it's still not really moral (i.e. doing something good for a reward).

But that's not to say that I disagree with Brooks' conclusion. It doesn't surprise me that religious folk tend to give more than secularists. However, I wouldn't necessarily say that means that religious people are "better people" than are secularists. For example, my link above shows that the trend is reversed if you change the operational definition of what "morality" means. As soon as you start comparing a countries religious trends with the rates of abortion, Stds, homicide, etc, well...you get the picture.

It was interesting to read though, and I appreciate you digging it up for me. Take care.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

29. First thoughts:

All I've done so far is read the introduction and looked at the scatter graphs at the end (it's quite late here in the UK; right now my brain can cope with pictures but not words, I'll try and post a more detailed response tomorrow), but a few thoughts:

Most of the graphs are unspectacular. The thing that leaps out at me is that the US distorts the data a lot; it's much more religious and also has many more social problems than all the others. These may or may not be connected. Apart from that, there doesn't seem to be much correlation in many of the examples.

The ones that do show strong correlation with religion are disbelief in Evolution (unsurprisingly), infant mortality, and sexual health problems.

The interpretation I'd put on these is that the attitude promoted by Christianity, and I think by other religions, that sex is something shameful and that sex education is therefor a bad thing is dangerously and harmfully wrong. I'd be very interested to see statistics on correlation between teenage pregnancy and religious belief, adjusted for income/class, in a single country, e.g. the US, to see if the correlation continues at that level - I have a hunch it might not, because while
number of religious people determines the level of sex education the state provides, all children within that state will get the same sex ed.

One thing this raises is the difference between the questions "do religious people, on average, have higher or lower standards of personal morality" and "is the influence of religion on a society positive or negative": I'd be inclined to say that the answers are tentatively "higher" and "negative", paradoxically.

Although, of course, it depends on what you mean by "personal morality", which is a whole new kettle of fish. As I've said at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.phpaz=view_all&address=214x48663

I don't think that it's fair to say that Christians do good in hope of reward and their good deeds are hence worth less. Donation to charity has the advantages that it's universally agreed to be moral, and it's easy to measure, but obviously it's nothing like the be-all and end-all of personal morality, or even the most important factor.

[varkam]

30. A response.

The United States, is indeed, an outlier in many respects:

...the United states is the only prosperous first world nation to retain rates of religiosity otherwise limited to the second and third worlds (Bishop; PEW). (From paragraph 13)

Despite a significant decline from a recent peak in the 1980s (Rosenfeld), the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard (Beeghley, Doyle, 2000). (Paragraph 15)

Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S. ... Early adolescent pregnancy and birth have dropped in the developed democracies (Abma et al; Singh and Darroch), but rates are two to dozens of times higher in the U.S. where the decline has been more modest. (Paragraph 16)

The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a "shining city on the hill" to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to the basic measures of societal health...In some cases, the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from the less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes outstandingly so. (From paragraph 18)

As for your your interest in seeing the same results within a single country:

There is evidence that within in the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002).

However, it is of utmost importance to note that the data contained within the article is not casual in nature (and indeed, the author points that out himself). There could be (and probably are) several other important factors that affect all of these things. The purpose of the article was primarily preliminary in nature, that is it was intended to examine the causal links made by religious / political leaders that theism is an essential bedrock foundation of a good society and to spur further research and debate on the topic.

One big drawback to the paper, IMHO, is that the author does not report his statistics or his raw data. Without that, it's pretty much impossible for people like us to really determine the statistical significance of these correlations. The author does provide a partial explanation for this in paragraph 12 (in which he discusses the statistical methods and rationale) - which, in my assumption, prevented him from determining the statistical significance of the results.

But it is curious to note that *there is* a correlation here between religious fervor and many of the measures of societal health that the author outlines. While I don't think that is proves that religion is bad for society, I do think it means we can reject claims that it is necessary for a good one - as that is simply not the case.

And while the study you mentioned may offer support to the claim that "on average people of religious conviction have a higher standard of personal morality", I think there is an important possible methodological flaw that needs to be pointed out - namely the method by which Brooks collected his data. While he never explicitly refers to the survey, they are rely inherently on self report measures. From research that I've worked on in the social sciences, when you're asking questions to people about "how much do you donate / volunteer", one important question to ask is that of social desirability (i.e. people tend to respond in a way in which they will appear more favorable under cultural norms). I'm not saying that invalidates the entire study, however it is very difficult to avoid, even with carefully constructed survey methods, and one which Brooks does not seem to even address (whereas Paul does on the measure of attending church services).

And lastly, you're absolutely right in asserting that it's not fair to say the deeds of Christians are worth less. I, however, have never made that sweeping generalization. I believe Christians can be just as ethical as atheists and their deeds can be just as worthy from a moral standpoint. The assumption that I'm making is that Christians can do a moral deed without thought of reward or punishment, just as atheists can. And of course charitable donations are laudable actions which I don't intend to deride or discourage. However, given our original disagreement on morality and theism, I think the operational definition is questionable at best (which to your credit, you expanded on in your closing sentence).

[heidler1]

31. I know for a fact that working for a large Corp. can expose one to a lot

intimidation if you do not approve of charity deductions from your paycheck. So the CEO can bragg about 100%.

[Inland]

26. Your theory had nothing to do with crime, as it rested on motive, not acts

Your theory was that good behavior in christians was not "ethical" because it was motivated by a reward of heaven. In other words, the acts were good behavior but the motive robbed them of ethics.

But crime doesn't care about one's motive for obeying the law.

Therefore you've taken another step in saying that even with the motive, christians aren't acting any better than anyone else. From bad to worse.

[varkam]

28. Is this still my 'Christianity is not ethical' thread?

Oh no wait, it's a completely different thread. I wasn't even advancing my "theory" (actually it's not really "my theory", it has it's roots in Aristotelean virtue ethics). I was actually defending Christians, Inland. The OP noted how interesting it was that the majority of people in prison are Christian or Muslim, and I stated that this is probably because the majority of the people in the country are Christian.

Try to stay on topic.

<edit for subject change>

[Inland]

32. Who can tell.

You missed the point of the OP, certainly.

[TechBear_Seattle]

15. Regarding the Muslims in prison...

Most of them are members of the Nation of Islam. The group's emphasis on race, belief that Elijah Mohammad is a prophet on the same rank as Islam's founder, and theological importance of UFOs as messengers of God mean that nearly every Muslim organization on the planet consider NoI to be heretical if not outright non-Islamic.

[MemphisTiger]

16. Actually many people find religion in prison

They have time to think about what they have done in the last and repent.

[kwassa]

17. So, what is your point, anyways?

That if you are Christian or Muslim, you are going to jail?

what vast social theory does this statistic suggest to you?

[supernova]

18. Those are the chaplains that are available

I suspect that has a lot to do with it. If other spiritual paths had more prison outreach, they might find more adherents in prison, I'd suspect.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. Here's the question:

Are they currently religious Christians and Muslims, or is that just what they were raised?

You know, many years ago, the chaplain at the Minnesota State Pentientiary at Stillwater was concerned that so many of the prisoners had been brought up Lutheran. He wondered if there was something about being Lutheran that predisposed people to crime, so he wrote to prison chaplains around the country to find out the percentage of Lutherans in their populations.

The first response came from a prison in Alabama. "What's a Lutheran?"

[Name removed]

25. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[progressoid]

33. They're more likely to get early release if they've "found" God

[beam me up scottie]

34. Don't forget faith-based prisons...

Florida's new approach to inmate reform: a 'faith-based' prison

"If you have an entire prison comprised solely of people who want to better themselves, you take out some of the negative influences that you find in a traditional prison environment," said prison spokesman Mr. Ivey. "We hope to capitalize on that."

***********

But advocates of the scheme say there is proof that a faith-based approach to criminal rehabilitation can cut recidivism, citing the Iowa project - the InnerChange Freedom Initiative - as an example.

Results of a two-year study, released in June by the University of Pennsylvania and the conservative Manhattan Institute, showed that InnerChange graduates were 50 percent less likely to be arrested and 60 percent less likely to be reincarcerated than those who did not take part.

InnerChange has sparked debate, however, because it requires inmates to study the Bible and obliges them to become active church members for three months following release, drawing criticism that it amounts to religious indoctrination.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1224/p01s04-usju.html

Reminds me of the vultures who disguise themselves as pious "missionaries" so that they can prey on native people.