NCJ Number
166734
Date Published
1997
Length
292 pages
Annotation
Intended as a text for students entering criminal justice professions, this book provides a basic understanding of the practical application of statistics within the criminal justice field.
Abstract
The text addresses the basic statistical problems that criminal justice practitioners are likely to encounter. It presents statistics as a set of tools or procedures for addressing specific data analysis problems rather than as a formal, abstract subject. Examples of such problems might be the need for police administrators to compare performance among divisions, for court administrators to analyze caseload distributions, or for corrections administrators to predict prison populations. All of the statistical techniques addressed are presented in the context of practical problems. Topics covered in the text include data presentation, bivariate regression, hypothesis testing, T-tests, chi-square, and graphing techniques. Each chapter begins with a vignette that places the reader in a realistic situation with a statistical problem. Information within the chapter provides the means to address the problem, and students are given the opportunity to work on multiple practice exercises. Chapters conclude with important lessons on SPSS Windows, the computer program used by virtually all the social sciences. The accompanying disk contains three criminal justice-related data sets and companion files ready for use with SPSS, thus enabling students to practice any of the statistical techniques discussed in the text. Issues geared toward criminal justice students are the calculation of crime rates, multiple regression analysis, percentage of successful prosecutions, number of individuals on probation, number of inmates, and lengths of sentences. Chapter notes and references and a subject index