Criminal Law: Benefits of Using Statistical Data in Criminal Justice

This report examines the significance of statistical data in the criminal justice system. It emphasizes the government's use of statistics for effective crime program implementation, citizen protection, and policy assessment. The report highlights the importance of comprehensive data collection, especially in the age of cybercrimes, and the use of qualitative and quantitative research for generating crime-related data. It then delves into the role of statistical analysis in transforming collected data into actionable information for decision-making and policy research. The report differentiates between descriptive and inferential statistics, explaining how each is used in criminal investigations, from determining crime probabilities to aiding in suspect identification, with examples of how investigators use data and facts to make inferences and conclusions. The report concludes by discussing the measures of central tendency and spread, which are used in descriptive statistics.

Running head: CRIMINAL LAW
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Benefits of Using Statistical Data in Criminal Justice
For the effective implementation of the anti-crime programs, the protection of the well
being of the citizen and for the assessment of the social impact on the public policies and
expenditures using statistics and statistical analysis on the criminal justice is seen to be critical
for the government. The comprehensive and reliable collection of statistics of the criminal justice
is not possible to be understated in an ever increasing interconnected and globalized world
especially in this age of cybercrimes. Extensive researches are undertaken by the government by
using qualitative and quantitative techniques for generating huge amount of data relating to
crime, criminal profiles, socio-economic, political and geographical profile of both different
communities and the country as a whole which is then collected for sustaining the criminal
justice system. At the time of research for transforming all the data that had been collected into
information useful for the effective decision-making in criminal justice as well as in policy
research statistical analysis is required.
The study of statistics can be described as involving extensive use of numbers and
information for describing any situation or for deriving any logical inference or conclusion by
way of analysis of numerical and non-numerical figures and facts. In a broader way Statistics can
be referred to as a range of procedures and techniques for the analysis, interpretation, display and
decision-making on the basis of data (Dammer & Albanese, 2013). .
In the criminal justice system the statistical data are collected for answering questions
related to the crimes and often times the data are seen to be collected at the time of the
investigation process of the crime. For showing the probabilities of various crimes that occur in

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certain areas during certain times and for helping efforts of the direct enforcements for the
maximization of the safety of the public, information gathered from the statistical data are used
by the crime analysts. Often times the data are used by the investigators for inferring about
different types of crimes and offenders. Various tools are used by the professionals in the Law
enforcement in pursuit of justice (Healey, 2014). However many times investigation is seen to be
having a lot of gray areas instead of being completely black and white. Although for aiding the
investigators in the identification of the suspects, modern technologies like the GPS, surveillance
systems and cell phone data, yet the totality of a situation might be leading the investigator for
inferring about the crimes. Determination for the time of occurrence of certain types of crimes is
made by the investigators by the use of data. Inference is when data and facts that are already
known are used for making any assumptions or opinions (Gau, 2018). By the use of statistical
data conclusions regarding the assumptions and opinions are made with a relative degree of
certainty. Although in descriptive data central measures like mean, median and mode are used,
however in inferential data conclusions are reached. As example, if the data on a very large
population is needed to be collected, it is done with the help of inferential statistics. By way of
inferential statistics inferences are made about populations using the data that had been drawn
from the population. In place of using entire population for gathering, samples are collected for
making inferences by use of probability distributions, hypothesis testing, regression analysis and
correlation testing.
Descriptive statistics can be described as the analysis of any data for describing, showing
or summarizing the same in such a meaningful way that useful patterns might be seen as
emerging from the data. However in descriptive statistics conclusions are not possible beyond
the data that has been analyzed. Descriptive statistics simply can be described as a way for

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describing data (McCue, 2014). For describing any data, generally, two measures of statistic are
used. These are the measures of central tendency and measure of spread, Measure of central
tendency describes the central position of the distribution of frequency from a group of data
present. This central positioning is described by use of a number of statistics which include
mean, median and mode. Measures of spread summarize a group of data by way of description of
how much spread out the scores are.

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Reference
Dammer, H. R., & Albanese, J. S. (2013). Comparative criminal justice systems. Cengage
Learning.
Gau, J. M. (2018). Statistics for criminology and criminal justice. Sage Publications.
Healey, J. F. (2014). Statistics: A tool for social research. Cengage Learning.
McCue, C. (2014). Data mining and predictive analysis: Intelligence gathering and crime
analysis. Butterworth-Heinemann.