Misapplications Reviews: Jail Terms
Abstract
I have had several opportunities in recent months to serve as a statistical “expert” in judicial proceedings. Some people, of course, believe that such proceedings get even more incomprehensible and farcical as their quantitative content grows. But with regulations and requirements now routinely expressed in numerical terms, it is hard to see how statistics can be absent from accusations that the standards have been violated. And if one side in a case plays an absurd numbers game, then the other is as free to attack the analysis as it is to rebut any other form of evidence.

