There have been a number of interesting media stories lately shedding light on how information technology is affecting crime commision and the operations of criminal justice systems. Here are some examples:
Web Sites Listing Informants Concern Justice Dept., New York Times, May 22, 2007 — Web sites are posting the names of people cooperating with criminal justice authorities.
DA: Kansas Teen Was Strangled by “Ligature“, CNN, June 8 2007 — Murder suspect expressed his deviance through a MySpace page.
And in the international realm:
Four Arrested in Iraq “Honor” Killing, CNN, May 21, 2007 — The heinous crime was caught on a cellphone video and broadcast internationally.
Digital Fears Emerge After Data Seige in Estonia, New York Times, May 29, 2007 — Estonia accused Russia of “cyberwar.”
Categories: criminal justice · international · technology
Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, posted a very interesting pair of line graphs on his blog Political Arithmetik showing the change in Americans’ opinions about the death penalty over time. The point of his post was to show how changes in survey question wording can affect respondents’ answers, as well as the conclusions you draw from the data. The blog has a lot of other informative presentations of polling data. Aside from the fact that I find the content interesting, I also like this blog because it highlights important data resources (such as the Roper Center’s iPoll used to create the death penalty graphs) and nicely illustrates the utility of the statistical software R, which is a powerful and free package. It’s a nice alternative for those who cannot afford SAS or Stata.
I should also mention that I have taken Dr. Franklin’s ICPSR summer course on Maximum Likelihood estimation twice and found it incredibly useful.
Categories: criminal justice · data · technology
