Saturday, July 30, 2005

Timelines on the Web - Part III - Criminal Justice

Key Crime & Justice Facts at a Glance

Here's a useful example of how a very complex domain of interest (Criminal Justice) can be represented as a series of time series pictures that highlight some of the important factors at work.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/charts.pdf

It's a set of 13 attractive and easy to read time series graphs all combined in a single PDF file for easy distribution. This PDF includes information about crime rates, prison populations, expenditures and so on.

DETAILS

This particular example includes factors such as:

1. violent crimes committed
2. violent crimes reported
3. arrests for violent crimes
4. property crime rates
5. crime rate by gender of victim
6. drug abuse violations by adults
7. drug abuse violations by juveniles
8. the homicide rate per 100,000 population
9. rape rates per 1,000 persons over 12 years old
10. violent crime by perceived age of offender
11. homicide by age of victim
12. correctional populations by jail, parole, prison, and probation
13. state prison population by offense type
14. prisoners on death row
15. executions
16. direct expenditures by level of government

Back at the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics web site, at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dtdata.htm you can find all these important metrics and literally thousands more.

For example, you can download a CSV file on reported crime from http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/State/DownCrimeStatebyState.cfm/CrimeStatebyState.csv

COMMENTARY

While these pictures don't tell you everything you might ever want to know, they certainly are more than sufficient to begin an interesting and useful conversation about the trends in the area of Criminal Justice.

The domains of interest that most impact our lives are often complex and can only be understood by examining all of the most important factors in some detail to see how each of these changes over time. This particular presentation is in my opinion an excellent example of how to begin a conversation on these important topics.

As an alternative way to skillfully jump start a conversation, the related web page at: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm provides a slightly larger set of charts in thumbnail format.

The thumbnails can be clicked through larger size image and some background infomration on that set of metrics. The larger size image can in turn be clicked through to see the underlying data.

The "At A Glance' page has the added bonus of providing a brief, 25 word or less statement about each thumbnail graph to help put it into context. E.g. "Serious violent crime levels declined since 1993."

All in all, I find this an excellent example and a skillful approach to presenting a complex subject. An ordinary person with no special expertise in Criminal Justice, Statistics, or Programming but moderately proficient at browsing the web can quickly become informed about the top level trends in Criminal Justice in the United States. And if time and interest permit, that same person can use that web site as a jumping off place for further in depth investigations.

ATTRACTIVE VISUAL FEATURES

Returning to the PDF file, it displayed a number of attractive visual featues that made this series of graphs much easier to read, interpret and digest.

A. The scales on the X and Y axis were extremely easy to read

B. For graphs with multiple series, they were very clearly labeled by attaching the text near the timeline trend which made it easy to figure out which series was which.

C. The number of metrics shown on a single graph was kept to reasonably small number (maximum of 4) which also added to readability. Colors were chosen so each metric was readily distinguishable.

D. Many, but not all, of the graphs used the same date range (1973-2001).

E. The individual graphs frequently included a detailed caption at the bottom that added to the total understanding.

F. Font size all around was very readable on a laptop screen, even when the window was reduced to 1/3 the size of the screen.


WHAT MIGHT HAVE MADE THESE EVEN BETTER

1. Providing a URL in each case that pointed to the source data

2. Organizing the sequence so all the charts covering the same time period were together

3. Including a 25 word or less comment in a prominent position similar to the ones that appear with the thumbnails on the AT A GLANCE page.

4. Having data that is more up to date. This is the most serious flaw in the data available on the PDF and on the AT A GLANCE page. The thumbnails show data through 2003, while the PDF only goes to 2001. If you are interested in Criminal Justice, you probably want to know what happened in 2004 and even in the first 6 months of 2005.

5. Some of these metrics might benefit from being observable as a monthly time series in addition to the the yearly view.

LATE DATA & EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS

Late data can be a serious impediment to proper understanding, especially if you are considering making decisions or interventions today based on the available data. By definition, when data is late, early warning goes out the window. The technology exists today to make this kind of data available in near real time, but in many real world cases, we are finding that really important data is unbelievably late.

We will return to this problem of late data later posts with some ideas on how to best deal with it.

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