Overview
This entry provides an account of the history of statistics and its relation to criminal justice and criminology. It describes how the “Law of Errors,” initially based on astronomical observations, was adopted to explain “social physics” and in particular, the relative constancy of crime. Analytic methods that were developed to uncover patterns in data, which were not apparent prior to the utilization of the new methods, are described. Frequentist and Bayesian views of statistics are discussed, as well as issues surrounding some of the analytical methods used in criminology and criminal justice, including the concept of “statistical significance”; these issues are often glossed over by those who apply them.
Introduction
When a researcher in criminology and criminal justice does statistical analysis nowadays, all too often it goes like this. S/he:
Gets permission to access a data set – for example, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the National Longitudinal...
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Maltz, M.D., Frey, K. (2014). History of the Statistics of Crime and Criminal Justice. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_250
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