Can Sense be Made of Crime Statistics?

This chapter has two objectives: first to explain to as wide an audience as possible the methodological rationale lying behind the technique of multiple regression analysis as it is exploited by economists in the empirical investigation of the Criminal Justice System (CJS); secondly, to expound an innovation to the above technique designed to overcome one of the major difficulties in the empirical analysis of the CJS, i.e. the ‘dark figure problem’. The difference between the economist’s and the other two methods stem from both pragmatic and philosophical considerations. In tackling the statistical problem of estimation, using multiple regression analysis on system supplied data, the people have two main problems to overcome in the CJS, i.e. the ‘identification problem’ and ‘dark figure problem’. In concluding the chapter paper it must be said that the question posed in the title has to be answered in the affirmative.