Statistics in Criminal Justice System
Statistics is the science of collection, organization, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments. Criminal justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. Those accused of crime have protections against abuse of investigatory and prosecution powers. A statistician is someone who is particularly well versed in the ways of thinking necessary for the successful application of statistical analysis. Such people have often gained this experience through working in any of a wide number of fields. Statistics is very much related with the criminal justice system. In every components of Criminal justice System the necessity of statistics is know no bounds.
The law enforcement agency must have to maintain their crime statistics, no. of records, types of crime, types of offenders, time and place of occurrence, comparative analysis etc. The court also maintains statistics such as records, no. of acquittal, no. of caseload, no. of sentencing etc.
The correctional institutions like prison, parole and probation and other correctional institutions also maintain some kinds of justices. Therefore, we can see that necessity of applications of statistics in Criminal Justice System is out of question. Thus, I like to emphasize on the necessity of statistics in Criminal Justice System and its applications in studying law to become a good lawyer, judge or legal officer .
Thanks
N.B:
This writing is a concise version of a term paper which I submitted in my MSS in Criminology and Criminal Justice,DU. As for partial requirement of a course on Criminal Justice system in Bangladesh.
