Tag Archives: statistics

United States v. Hare

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. SHANE ELLIOTT HARE, a/k/a “Play”
US v. GREGORY ANTOINE WILLIAMS, a/k/a “J”
US v. ANTONIO EDWARDS, a/k/a “Tank”
US Court of Appeals For the 4th Circuit, Floyd, Filed April 19, 2016,
Entrapment – Outrageous Conduct – No outrageous conduct where ATF sting involved contacting a known armed drug-trafficker who then recruited a robbery crew targeting a fake drug house with a supposed 10-15 kilograms of cocaine inside.

(Concur by Shedd – “[n]ot troubled” by the ATF’s use of undercover officers and a fake drug house to set up a sting operation on robbery crew)
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Would a Fed Shutdown Give DoJ Statisticians Time to Think About What They’re Saying?

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The Baltimore Crime Blog reported that “a Department of Justice survey of multiple studies has concluded that license plate readers have no appreciable impact on crime rates.”

A check of The Office of Justice Programs’ CrimeSolutions.gov showed a rating for “License Plate Recognition Technology” of “No Effects – More than one study.” According to the site, this rating is used where “Programs or practices have strong evidence indicating that they had no effects or had harmful effects.”

In a middle-school book-report fed to policy makers for consumption, the people at CrimeSolutions.gov regurgitated various facts mentioned in the 2 studies they relied on to make that sweeping conclusion, but didn’t actually conduct any analysis to see if what they were reading actually stood for the propositions they were citing. (Ok, there were some big words in there… it was more like a poorly executed high-school book report)

The review relied entirely on 2 studies, both of which confirmed that LPRs are effective in identifying stolen vehicles and stolen registration plates, with collateral benefits related to identification of wanted persons and persons on various watch-lists (gang, terrorist, sex-offender).

Neither study demonstrated an impact on the crime RATE, but given the limited scope of the studies and the inherently mobile nature of auto-theft, this shouldn’t have been an expected outcome.
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