Not prison but county jail in AR. When I was young and stupid. When I was put into my cell or whatever they gave me a bible and I said I don’t need it and they said take it anyway because you are going to need it. I was raised by mom and dad. Dad was a catcholic mom was a baptist so I had to read the whole stupid thing because otherwise mom would give us an ass whooping. But never read the Quran so I thought if they offered or forced a bible on you than you should be able to get a Quran. As an agnostic I thought it was really fucked up when they told me no.
I guarantee you the bibles in question are provided by some local (private) fundamentalist organization. There’s no way the prison is spending its own money on that. So then you’ve got to look at who is the biggest group of religion-peddlers to find your most likely source.
In America at present, the various Christianity-adjacent sects are basically the only religious groups out proselytizing in any significant numbers. I suspect that compared to the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Aventists, and assorted Evangelical/Baptist types, everyone else is basically just a rounding error.
If experience is any judge, plenty of dudes go into prison and come out Muslim. So Allah must still find them somehow.
The bibles are donated in a feeble attempt to convert the “wicked”. In any case, mostly the free-bible programs are a grift scamming the well-meaning people who donate funds for it. The bibles aren’t quite that expensive, and the people soliciting the donations are taking a cut. The grift offers ‘feel good’ vibes with little effort to the donors.
same as the people selling tracts for people to hand out, really. The tracts are useless. nobody ever saw a tract and was like “WOW I’m a heathen! I should repent!” (at most, people get a chuckle before littering on the street corner.) but the people selling the tract make a lot of money.
fun fact: the typical gideon bible isn’t a complete bible. Cuts out a lot of the “And god smote that asshole for being an asshole,” and “God smokte that asshole because he smote his brother, and the guy refused to get his brother’s wife prego”; also the child rape. the genocide. the collecting foreskins. Oh, and the other genocide. The incest. And that other-other genocide. and. uh. well. basically all the stuff that’s likely to get people to go “huh. that’s pretty fucked up.”
When I was in basic training in the U.S. Army in the late '90s, we were also offered free bibles and rosary beads and no other religious materials, although there were various services for many religions on Sundays that you were allowed to attend.
Because the separation of church and state in America is constantly under attack and there’s a large political movement to make America officially Christian.
I met a fundamentalist Christian a few years ago, who just came back from overseas. She flew Air Emirates, an openly Muslim airline. She recounted with a malicious smugness how she replaced the Qurans in the seats with bibles. I asked her what good she thought that would do - did she think such a disrespeful act, done with malice, would encourage them to invite Jesus to their bosom. She frowned heavily and said nothing. I asked why even use an airline you have so much hatred for, why not use a good, clean-living, Christian™ airline? She squirmed and mumbled something about Air Emirates being the cheapest. I asked her if someone replaced her bible with a Quran on a plane, would she be receptive to the message of the Quran, or would she just be offended that someone is being malicious towards her holy book of choice. She looked like she was going to cry, and walked away.
I have a feeling airlines don't really care either.
I very seriously considered writing and publishing a book called "Mind Your Own Fucking Business - The Sane Guide To Personal Belief Systems" and aggressively lobbying to have copies of the book in hotels, airplanes etc. It's probably a good thing I don't have enough money to act on my ideas, because it would cause me so much more trouble.