Religion in U.S. prisons

Several years ago, the Pew Research Center polled prison chaplains in all 50 U.S. states to get an idea of what their ministries were like, and they found fascinating results. For instance, 73% of chaplains said it was either somewhat common or very common that inmates they ministered to would actively try to convert other inmates to their religion. But perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising given that inmates in U.S. federal prisons, in general, are more religious than the general U.S. population.

At least that’s what FiveThirtyEight’s Mona Chalabi found when she compared data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons with data from the 2008 Census Bureau. The graphic below shows some of the more interesting points of Chalabi’s analysis, and this somewhat related (work with me) Pew map, shows which countries in the world outlaw blasphemy.

[Dawn Cherie Araujo is Global Sisters Report staff writer, based in Kansas City, Mo. Follow her on Twitter @dawn_cherie]

Images