Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
in Virginia??????????
A website known as RoadSnacks recently published an article titled
These Are The 10 Most Dangerous Places in Virginia. Like most residents
of Tappahannock and Essex County, I was rather surprised to see
Tappahannock listed as the tenth most dangerous place in Virginia.
Ranked just three places behind Richmond (which not that long ago
competed for U.S. Murder Capital) and one place behind Petersburg.
Rankings can be fun and entertaining. RoadSnacks has other
rankings such as These Are The 10 Most Redneck Cities in Tennessee and
These are the 10 Places in North Carolina That Need a Hug.
And to the articles credit, it does acknowledge there was a 15% drop
in property crime from 2012 to 2013. But a quote Mark Twain made
famous came to mind when reading this article: There are three kinds of
lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The article said we didnt want to
rely on speculation and opinion. Instead we looked at hard numbers from
the FBIs last three years of reporting. Specifically, the article points to the
FBIs Uniform Crime Report.
The article did not point out that its primary source, the FBIs
Uniform Crime Report, issues a Caution Against Rankings, which states
[T]the FBI has a long-standing policy against ranking.on the basis of
crime data alone. Despite repeated warnings against these practices, some
data users continue to challenge and misunderstand this position. The
report goes on to say Data users should not rank locales because there are
many factors that cause the nature and type of crime to vary from place to
place.
The methodology was also interesting. The article indicates we only
analyzed places with populations of more than 1,000 people. Because in
our opinion, rate statistics become too variable for places with under 1,000
people where one violent crime can swing a places rank dramatically. It
would be fair to say the same is true for a town with 2,398 people. For
example, a series of burglaries in town at any given time can have an
inflated effect on our per capita property crime statistics.
Vince Donoghue
Commonwealths Attorney1
Essex County2