NCJ Number
180484
Editor(s)
Ken Pease
Date Published
1999
Length
441 pages
Annotation
This volume discusses collecting and using criminal statistics.
Abstract
The book includes 23 essays concerning the following topics: (1) zero-tolerance policing; (2) issues surrounding the scope of the statistical commentator and the practitioner in criminal justice; (3) historical trends in violent crime; (4) the vulnerability of official statistics to apparently trivial differences in recording practice; (5, 6) summary of the most recent British national survey of crime victimization and methodological problems with such surveys; (7) why crime rates change; (8) implications of changing the way victimization is enumerated; (9) differences between high- and low-crime areas; (10) identifying crime “hot spots”; (11) how one table in criminal statistics could be recalculated to show the prevalence of convictions; (12) comparing the dimensions of criminal careers; (13) predicting an individual’s probability of conviction; (14) how criminological imagination allows data to be looked at in a particular way; (15, 16) why some statistical analyses should not be taken at face value; (17) the effect of one-off deterrent sentences on reducing rates of a crime; (18) the effect of “net-widening”; (19) critique of using official statistics as evidence of discrimination against women; (20) work of the Crown Prosecution Service; (21) use of the suspended sentence; (22) effects of crowding and prison size on the rate of reconviction; and (23) use of meta-analysis to inform a conclusion about the effectiveness of penal treatments. References, figures, notes, tables, index