Carl Bialik of 538 Politics interviews HRDAG executive director Patrick Ball in an article about the recently released Bureau of Justice Statistics report about the number of annual police killings, both reported and unreported. As Bialik writes, this is a math puzzle with real consequences. Here’s an excerpt.

Patrick Ball, co-author of the critique and executive director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, said it’s not the BJS’s fault that it underestimated the number. That it estimated it at all was an important step, he said. Government agencies don’t all audit their own data or undertake the difficult task of matching records that often have incomplete or missing information. So they should get some credit for that.

But to make their estimates, the report’s authors had to make some simplifying assumptions, ones that Ball said likely led to an undercount. “For sure, the estimates are too low,” Ball said in a video chat Wednesday.

538 Politics
Carl Bialik
March 6, 2015
Link to story on 538 Politics

Related blogpost (BJS Report on Arrest-Related Deaths: True Number Likely Much Greater)

Back to Press Room