No Time For Crime: More Religious Communities Have Lower Rates Of Black, White and Latino Violence

[Jim__]

33. What is the source for your claim that the 0.07% includes unaffiliated believers?

Last edited Sun Dec 15, 2013, 05:05 PM - Edit history (1)

Your claim:

Meanwhile, simple demographics pulled from the US Federal Bureau of Prisons shows atheists, agnostics and unaffiliated believers--who account for 20% of the total population--comprise a paltry 0.07% of the country's incarcerated population.

According to this article (my bolding), based on a report on federal prisons, they do not:

For starters the numbers reported are only of the federal prisoners, about 218,000 people, not of all prisons in America, and they only cover a self-reported religious affiliation or lack thereof by the inmates themselves. Keeping all this in mind, the data showed that 0.07% of the inmates were atheists, 28.7% Protestants, 24% Catholics, 5.5% Muslims, and 3.1% American Indians. In addition 3% of the inmates listed “other” as religious affiliation, and 3.44% were “unknown”. We cannot assume that those who listed “other” or “unknown” have no religious affiliation; they might have religious affiliation and didn’t want to declare it, or they might not. Lastly 17% of the inmates reported no religious preference. We cannot make assumptions as to what this means either, they may be either religious but with no particular church affiliation, may be spiritual, non-spiritual, and they may even be “nones” (atheists/non-religious) as defined by some sociologists.

According to wikipedia, the actual number puts it right in line with the national estimate of unaffiliated:

The majority of Americans (73–80%) identify themselves as Christians and about 15–20% have no religious affiliation.[2][3] According to the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) (2008) 76% of the American adult population identified themselves as Christians, with 25% identifying themselves as Catholics, and 51% identifying themselves as Christians spanning some 30 religious groupings.[2][4] The same survey says that other religions (including, for example, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism) collectively make up about 4% of the adult population, another 15% of the adult population claim no religious affiliation, and 5.2% said they did not know, or they refused to reply.[2] According to a 2012 survey by the Pew forum, 36 percent of Americans state that they attend services nearly every week or more.[5]

Also, your claim:

... simple statistics shows religious people are more likely to commit crimes--or at least get themselves arrested, tried and found guilty of crimes--than are the non-religious.

is not accurate. What the data actually show is that inmates are more likely to self-identify as religious or non-affiliated than as atheists.