Posts by Bart Janssen
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Legal Beagle: Three Strikes five years…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I have not provided the numbers for offending that would have been a second strike from Jun '10 - Jun '15 but was not because what would otherwise have been the first strike would have been between Jun '05 - Jun '10.
Ah I see. So your thesis is that some (presumably large) number of first strike offenders in the '10-'15 tranche were in fact second strike offenders. This would imply in increase in offending from the two strike rate seen '05-'10 that is hidden.
Kind of like the rush to buy before the price goes up.
Or the rate could be pretty much static and the law change could have had no effect at all.
Really if you want to do an analysis you need year by year data from which you can extract variability and then you might be able to determine if any given year or group of years was statistically different. But frankly looking at what you have presented so far I'd say you'd be wasting time because the numbers are so low and so similar that it's highly unlikely you will find any difference that correlates with the law change, but I am not a statistician, I just use stats.
Meanwhile I remain utterly unconvinced by your data that there was any real problem with recidivism that required the law in the first place.
Essentially you are asking whether a politically motivated law change had any measurable effect on a tiny percentage of recidivist criminals.
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From your post
In the five years prior to three strikes, 5517 people were convicted of an offence where that conviction would have been a ‘first strike’ had three strikes been in force at the time, and 103 were convicted of an offence that would have been a ‘second strike’.
So no I'm not excluding that person who committed two armed robberies within three years. Your own numbers say that only 103 people fit into that category.
Treating the two five year periods completely separately you have 103/5517 two timers and 68/5248 two timers.
It is highly unlikely that those numbers are significantly different and neither proportion is indicative of a problem with recidivism.
There might actually be some data that shows some problems with recidivism but you have not presented it in your post and nothing in your post provides any evidence that the law has done anything. You'd need year by year data and a proper statistical analysis of the variability in the year on year data to say anything of value about the effects of the law.
BTW that's the only data that really should be being discussed if you are interested in rates of recidivism, by summing over five years you have obscured variability which makes much of what you discussed meaningless.
But since this is a political law rather than any attempt to improve the justice system the whole discussion is moot - you may as well talk about selling lost luggage.
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Legal Beagle: Three Strikes five years…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
nearly every single one of them could have re-offended with a strike offence
Um no.
For that to have happened you'd have to argue that "first strike" crime rate dropped to near zero in the second five years and the only people committing first strike crimes were those who'd committed them in the previous five years.
So yes you can absolutely add those numbers together. And even if you treat the two five year samples independently there is clearly no real evidence of recidivism in either sample.
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Legal Beagle: Three Strikes five years…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Some evidence of deterrence.
Just eyeballing those numbers I doubt that there is any statistical significance in the change.
What is far more interesting and less reported is the rationale behind the 3 strikes was to prevent the enormous problem of recidivism
Over 10 years, of 10765 "first strike" offenders, a mere 171 re-offended!!! That argues there is no need for any legislation targeting re-offending at all.
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Hard News: 2016: The arc of a year, in reply to ,
It’s called engaging in science, for pleasure. People who engage in science for pleasure are gifted with a trait that might save civilisation from collapse.
To be fair there is a pretty wide continuum of scientists,
from those who do science to get rich - really there are some of those - they usually end up as managers or science advisors -
all the way to those who do science with the sole intention of saving the human race.Most of the tribe I belong to called scientists fall somewhere in the middle, yeah we do science because it's fun, because we want to know "WHY?" and nobody can tell us so we have to figure it out ourselves
But we also want some money - to pay for nice food
And we also think eventually science improves the human condition - sometimes slowly most times incrementally and almost always in a way nobody can predict.So asking why are "We wasting money on X or Y piece of research?" kind of utterly misses the point about science.
For all we know those data from those measurements may unlock the key to emmisions-free dairying or hangover-free beer or anything. It probably won't, but even if it doesn't the data will add incrementally to human knowledge and may tell us something we didn't expect about drug use. Something we couldn't have guessed would be in the data.
I know that's a leap of trust for taxpayers, myself included. But all the studies have shown the same thing - taxpayers who trust the tribe of scientists get rewarded.
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I'd like to start a movement to make next year's word of the year muffnut as both a new food (cross between a doughnut and a muffin) and a gender neutral insult.
eg. Russell is such a muffnut
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You said cockwomble <snort>
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Oh noes they stole our word
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries -
If I was going to be intellectual about it I'd say "confirmation bias" or the more common "echo chamber" to describe the way people have stopped listening to opposing views or ideas.
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post- truth or post-fact have to be it