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princessnegrita t1_ivhbcom wrote

Reply to comment by VaccumSaturdays in Left Unmonitored In His Cell, He Etched His Suicide Note Into a Wall On Rikers Island by hau5keeping

Thanks for linking this!

I also looked into the article and I saw an old professor of mine (who literally wrote one of the most cited recent books on criminal justice AND has extensive experience working with people in Rikers) called their ideas nonsense and a waste of resources.

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VaccumSaturdays t1_ivhoe20 wrote

Absolutely my pleasure. It’s wild this article came from the minds of Harvard folks, and was actually published

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princessnegrita t1_ivkjmq5 wrote

I’m gonna get a bit nerdy because social science is my field (which feels really weird to say). There’s been a focus on quantitative statistical methods in social science to “legitimize” the research and it’s been a disservice.

Basically, social science journals prioritize publishing this kind of research, so schools prioritize teaching these particular research methods. It becomes less about actually trying to explain the world around us as a complex interconnected beast than about isolating one particular issue, disregarding the complexities (because that’s too difficult to calculate) and trying to use stats to make an argument.

In the article linked, the professors do exactly that and simply dismiss the complexities of policing in the US because it fucks up their models and their arguments.

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