Exactly my point. Religion has
nothing to do with whether a person is good or evil, or if he
commits crimes or abides by the law. And yes, more catholics
end up in prisons than protestants, but that dosen't mean anything
cos' you've got to look into the population breakdown before you
can conclude anything.
Here's another article for your reference.
STUDIES: ATHEISTS SUPPLY LESS
THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS
by Wayne Aiken, North Carolina Director
AMERICAN ATHEISTS
It's surprising how many people remark to me, "You're an Atheist?
You must have no conscience about committing crime then." Nothing
could be further from the truth. In fact, if we examine the
population of our prisons, we see a very different picture.
In "The New Criminology," Max D. Schlapp and Edward E. Smith say
that two generations of statisticians found that the ratio of
convicts without religious training is about 1/10th of 1%. W.T.
Root, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh,
examined 1,916 prisoners and said, "Indifference to religion, due
to thought, strengthens character," adding that Unitarians,
Agnostics, Atheists and Free-Thinkers were absent from
penitentiaries, or nearly so.
During 10 years in Sing-Sing, of those executed for murder 65% were
Catholics, 26% Protestants, 6% Hebrew, 2% Pagan, and less than 1/3
of 1% non-religious.
Steiner and Swancara surveyed Canadian prisons and found 1,294
Catholics, 435 Anglicans, 241 Methodists, 135 Baptists, and 1
Unitarian.
Dr. Christian, Superintendent of the N.Y. State Reformatories,
checked records of 22,000 prison inmates and found only 4 college
graduates. In "Who's Who," 91% were college graduates; Christian
commented that "intelligence and knowledge produce right living,"
and, "crime is the offspring of superstition and ignorance."
Surveyed Massachusetts reformatories found every inmate to be
religious.
In Joliet Prison, there were 2,888 Catholics, 1,020 Baptists, 617
Methodists and no prisoners identified as non-religious.
Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in the state
population; but in the prisons, there were 22 times as many
Baptists as Jews, and 18 times as many Methodists as Jews. In
Sing-Sing, there were 1,553 inmates, 855 of them (over half)
Catholics, 518 Protestants, 117 Jews, and 8 non-religious.
Steiner first surveyed 27 states and found 19,400 Christians, 5,000
with no preference and only 3 Agnostics (one each in Connecticut,
New Hampshire, and Illinois). A later, more exhaustive survey found
60,605 Christians, 5,000 Jews, 131 Pagans, 4,000 "no preference,"
and only 3 Agnostics.
In one 19-state survey, Steiner found 15 non-believers,
Spiritualists, Theosophists, Deists, Pantheists and 1 Agnostic
among nearly 83,000 inmates. He labeled all 15 as
"anti-christians." The Elmira, N.Y. reformatory system overshadowed
all others, with nearly 31,000 inmates, including 15,694 Catholics
(half) and 10,968 Protestants, 4,000 Jews, 325 refusing to answer,
and 0 unbelievers.
In the East, over 64% of inmates are Roman Catholic. Throughout the
national prison population, they average 50%. A national census of
the general population found Catholics to be about 15% (and they
count from the diaper up). Hardly 12% are old enough to commit a
crime, and half of these are women. That leaves an adult Catholic
population of 6% supplying 50% of the prison population.
