Religion and Religions in Prisons : Observations from the United States and Europe

Abstract

Despite manifest differences and internal variety, this article attempts to integrate the histories and present landscapes of religious practice in prison in the United States and in Western Europe. We identify, among incarcerated people in the United States, Italy, and Germany, discernible drifts toward religious pluralization, privatization, and individualization. Over the past half-century, the administration of religion in prison has been loosened to allow for a wider variety of religious beliefs and practices. Meanwhile, as subsidized by outside volunteers, religion, especially of a socially useful, capitalism-friendly sort, remains a cost-effective means for prison administrators to efficiently subcontract their mandate to rehabilitate. Due to the decentralization and diversification of religion in contemporary prisons on both sides of the northern Atlantic, this article concludes by encouraging would-be ethnographers of the prison interested in religion to venture beyond the expressly delineated religious space and into what we call religious gray zones.