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Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice pp 2319–2326Cite as

History of the Statistics of Crime and Criminal Justice

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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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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Laura Dugan for her helpful comments. This entry borrows liberally from Maltz (1994a, b).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Michael D. Maltz

  2. Emeritus, Department of Criminal Justice and Department of Information and Decision Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Michael D. Maltz

  3. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Kathleen Frey

Authors
  1. Michael D. Maltz
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  2. Kathleen Frey
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael D. Maltz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  2. VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerben Bruinsma

  3. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    David Weisburd

  4. Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel

    David Weisburd

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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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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_250

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5689-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5690-2

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

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