HRDAG and #GivingTuesday 2018

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How a Data Tool Tracks Police Misconduct and Wandering Officers

Some police officers avoid accountability by “wandering” to another agency. HRDAG and partners created a data tool that tracks officers’ employment history.

Technical work at the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES-ng)

Bangladesh

In December 2006, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report documenting torture and unlawful killings committed by Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism force. According to HRW, many of the deaths for which RAB is responsible resulted from summary executions or extreme physical abuse. The statistical analysis presented in the report, "Judge, Jury, and Death: Torture and Executions by Bangladesh's Elite Security Force," was conducted by Romesh Silva, a statistician who worked within the Benetech Human Rights Program at the time, and who now works with HRDAG. While researching these incidents, HRW compiled ...

Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity

James Johndrow, Kristian Lum and Daniel Manrique-Vallier (2019). Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity. Biometrika, asy065, 22 January 2019. © 2019 Biometrika Trust. https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/asy065

James Johndrow, Kristian Lum and Daniel Manrique-Vallier (2019). Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity. Biometrika, asy065, 22 January 2019. © 2019 Biometrika Trust. https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/asy065

Layers of Bias: A Unified Approach for Understanding Problems With Risk Assessment

Laurel Eckhouse, Kristian Lum, Cynthia Conti-Cook and Julie Ciccolini (2018). Layers of Bias: A Unified Approach for Understanding Problems With Risk Assessment. Criminal Justice and Behavior. November 23, 2018. © 2018 Sage Journals. All rights reserved. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854818811379

Lies, Damned Lies, and “Official” Statistics

Megan Price and Maria Gargiulo (2021). Lies, Damned Lies, and "Official" Statistics. Health and Human Rights Journal. 24 June, 2021. © Health and Human Rights Journal.

Megan Price and Maria Gargiulo (2021). Lies, Damned Lies, and “Official” Statistics. Health and Human Rights Journal. 24 June, 2021. © Health and Human Rights Journal.

Theoretical limits of microclustering for record linkage

Setting the Record Straight on Predictive Policing and Race

Shots fired: Can technology really keep us safe from gunfire?

Significance

Abstract: An expensive American gunshot detection system claims it’s necessary because humans don’t always call the police to report gunfire. But opponents say it’s fatally flawed. To investigate, Bailey Passmore and Larry Barrett analysed data on emergencies within the city of Chicago. Read the article off-site.

Bailey Passmore and Larry Barrett. 2025. Shots fired: Can technology really keep us safe from gunfire? Significance, Volume 22, Issue 4, July 2025, Pages 34–37. 27 May 2025. © Royal Statistical Society 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrssig/qmaf042

Data-driven development needs both social and computer scientists

Excerpt:

Data scientists are programmers who ignore probability but like pretty graphs, said Patrick Ball, a statistician and human rights advocate who cofounded the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.

“Data is broken,” Ball said. “Anyone who thinks they’re going to use big data to solve a problem is already on the path to fantasy land.”

Big Data Predictive Analytics Comes to Academic and Nonprofit Institutions to Fuel Innovation

“Revolution Analytics will allow HRDAG to handle bigger data sets and leverage the power of R to accomplish this goal and uncover the truth.” Director of Research Megan Price is quoted

Outreach at Toronto TamilFest for Counting the Dead

Michelle spent a weekend in Toronto, Canada, reaching out to the community at TamilFest, where she and a colleague invited people to sit down and talk.

HRDAG Retreat 2018

What follows is an elaborate criss-crossing of collaborations—retreat is a time to embrace the productivity that comes with being in the same room.

Data on Kosovo – Other

The other data is in three files. All of the files are comma-delimited UTF-8 (like ASCII but including the characters to render Serbian names). The fields in each file are described below. If you use these data, please cite them with the following citation, as well as this note: “These are convenience sample data, and as such they are not a statistically representative sample of events in this conflict. These data do not support conclusions about patterns, trends, or other substantive comparisons (such as over time, space, ethnicity, age, etc.).” Human Rights Data Analysis Group. (2002). Database of NATO airstrikes, geographic coding, and KLA ...

“Surmortalité carcérale” sous Habré

Le statisticien américain Patrick Ball, expert au procès de Hissène Habré, a déclaré vendredi que le taux de mortalité d’opposants tchadiens présumés dans les prisons du régime Habré était encore pire que celui des prisonniers de guerre américains dans les camps japonais.

HRDAG Testifies in Hissène Habré Trial

Last week HRDAG’s executive director, Patrick Ball, served as an expert witness for the prosecution in the trial of Hissène Habré, the ruler of Chad from 1982 to 1990. The trial is taking place in Dakar, Senegal, where the 73-year-old Habré has been living since 1990 when he fled Chad. He has already been sentenced to death in absentia in Chad. Habré is being charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture that took place during his eight-year reign. The trial is happening at the Extraordinary African Chambers, which was inaugurated by Senegal and the African Union to try Habré. This is the first time that one country has ...

Protecting the Privacy of Whistle-Blowers: The Staten Island Files

HRDAG built a machine-learning tool to strip the raw data of any potentially identifying information such as names and court case numbers. There was no "acceptable error rate."

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

(This post is co-authored by Patrick Ball and Kristian Lum.) Today the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a report on their effort to document “all deaths that occur during the process of arrest in the United States.” The analysis estimates that the Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program covers only 34-49% of these deaths. A parallel program by the FBI (the Supplementary Homicide Reports, SHR) is estimated to cover approximately the same proportion of deaths. Even taking into consideration both programs, 28% of all police homicides remain unreported. In order to estimate the total number of homicides that appear on neither the ARD or ...

The Invisible Crime, (pdf of English translation)

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HRDAG and #GivingTuesday 2018

How a Data Tool Tracks Police Misconduct and Wandering Officers

Technical work at the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES-ng)

Bangladesh

Low-risk population size estimates in the presence of capture heterogeneity

Layers of Bias: A Unified Approach for Understanding Problems With Risk Assessment

Lies, Damned Lies, and “Official” Statistics

Theoretical limits of microclustering for record linkage

Setting the Record Straight on Predictive Policing and Race

Shots fired: Can technology really keep us safe from gunfire?

Significance

Data-driven development needs both social and computer scientists

Big Data Predictive Analytics Comes to Academic and Nonprofit Institutions to Fuel Innovation

Outreach at Toronto TamilFest for Counting the Dead

HRDAG Retreat 2018

Data on Kosovo – Other

“Surmortalité carcérale” sous Habré

HRDAG Testifies in Hissène Habré Trial

Protecting the Privacy of Whistle-Blowers: The Staten Island Files

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

The Invisible Crime, (pdf of English translation)

Our work has been used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations. We have worked with partners on projects on five continents.

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HRDAG

Selected projects

Stay informed about our work

Significance

Our work has been used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations. We have worked with partners on projects on five continents. Donate

HRDAG

Selected projects

Stay informed about our work

Our work has been used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations. We have worked with partners on projects on five continents.

Donate