The author advises that more current and longitudinal data are needed in order to determine whether the trend toward volunteerism in providing inmate religious services provides uniform opportunities for religious expression by all inmates, regardless of their religious orientation. Since the 1990s, States have increasingly eliminated chaplain positions in their corrections systems because of cost and the difficulty of meeting the increasingly diverse religious needs of inmates under a professional chaplaincy. This has resulted in a trend toward the use of volunteers to provide religious services to inmates. This creates the possibility that the volunteers may represent only dominant religious groups, thus creating an imbalance in serving the religious needs of inmates devoted to religions with relatively few adherents in the United States. There are no national data that can assist in determining whether this has happened; however, the secondary data analysis reported in this study indicates that between 1990 and 2000 the number of court orders for religious practices in prisons increased by 1 percent while court orders related to all sorts of other prison conditions declined significantly. This study determined trends in the provision of inmate religious services by examining a 1997 survey of 31 State correctional departments. The impact of the trend toward volunteerism in providing inmate religious services was examined through a secondary analysis of 1991 and 1997 Bureau of Justice Statistics' Surveys of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities, as well as the Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities for 1990, 1995, and 2000. 4 tables and 45 references