In 2022, Atheists Make Up Only 0.09% Of The Federal Prison Population

Hemant Mehta ✒ Atheists and Humanists are all-but-absent in federal prison, according to new data obtained exclusively by OnlySky.

1-August-2022

There are 157,064 people in the U.S. federal prison system, and exactly 134 of them identify as atheists. Those self-described atheists made up a mere 0.09% of the federal prison population.

That’s according to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed earlier this year with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

I made similar requests in 2013, 2015, and 2021, and the numbers have been roughly the same each time, suggesting this proportion isn’t changing even as the percentage of atheists in the general population steadily, yet slowly, inches upwards. More significantly, it means our presence in U.S. federal prisons is significantly lower than what we find in the general population. (Last year, a Pew Research Center analysis found that self-identified atheists made up 4% of the population.)

This isn’t just a rehash of what we already knew, though, because unlike seven years ago, there’s one new data point that we’ve never seen before today.

. . . There is bound to be a temptation to suggest these numbers show that atheists are more moral than religious people. But I would avoid saying that for a variety of reasons.

Continue reading @ Only Sky.