It is, one hopes, common knowledge that the massive majority of perpetrators of crime engage in that activity due to purely financial reasons. Perhaps hatred, fear, envy, jealousy, and assorted "negative" emotions induce humanity to engage in crime as the second most common "reasons." At a guess, I would think that alcohol and other drugs comprise the third greatest reason for "why" people commit crimes. Crime committed because of and in the name of religion, it appears, is not all that common.

(Here I am ignoring organized crime committed by crime syndicates, such as the sinister Scientology organization, that pretend to be "churches" for tax exemption status only. While Scientology Inc.'s many crimes and human rights abuses are extremely well-documented, these crimes and abuses are not religiously-induced: Scientology is not, of course, a religion, but a greatly profitable criminal enterprise likened to the Italian Mafia or the Russian Chechens.)

Some people have argued that religion is indeed the reason, not the cause, of most of criminal behavior. They argue that the currently popular religions of the word (Islam, Hindu, Christianity, and to some extent Buddhism) do nothing to curb humanity's abusive and criminal behavior: these religions mandate moral codes instead of teach and model ethical behavior, thereby ignoring the most fundamental foundations on why one should refrain from crime and other abusive behavior. Considering the fact that nearly 100% of the USA's prison population is comprised of members and followers of these religions, while atheists are almost non-existent in prison (though in the year 1990 atheists made up 8% of the USA's citizenry), this argument may be a valid one. While the currently popular religions all mandate refraining from criminal activity, none have succeeded in any noticable degree in inducing their members into accepting and abiding by that mandate.

I suppose if Humanism (and I don't mean secular humanism, which isn't a religion) were more popular, then and only then would religion be a factor in reducing crime and abuse. Then again, perhaps not.

Concerning financially motivated crime, surely the greatest harm is caused by corporations, politicians, and government agencies who engage in crime. In terms of how many people a crime harms, and how many people's standard of living is lowered by those crimes, surely crimes committed by businesses and government are vastly greater than all individual criminals combined.