Activists stand in solidarity with Michael Brown. Light Brigading/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Many aspects of the criminal justice system increasingly rely on complex statistical techniques to increase transparency, reduce disparities and cut costs. But there is one glaring exception.
National statistics on the police's use of deadly force are notoriously inaccurate. The very agency responsible for collecting the data has said so. The FBI director has even confessed that a British newspaper holds more accurate records on lethal police force than the FBI. These inaccuracies are mainly due to police departments’ refusal to report such data and the Department of Justice’s refusal to make data collection mandatory.
These current issues regarding data collection are reminiscent of what happened with lynchings. As with the police's use of deadly force, the exact number of lynchings is still not known and most likely never will be. Like today, it was non-government agencies that provided the most rigorous sources of information. And as with lynchings, the lack of accurate data is reflective of structural complicity in lethal violence.
