Criminal Justice

The assignment that I found to be the most useful to me during my time in this course was by far the Hate Crimes Follow-Up assignment. I already knew that data could be skewed, but we all want to believe that the statistics being reported to us by the news and other "trustworthy" sources is accurate. This assignment taught me that that isn't always the case. This assignment walked us through how to think for ourselves when it comes to analyzing data. I had to try to figure out if the data was accurate and what could account for its inaccuracies.

While working on this assignment I had to play the devil's advocate. I had to think of ways that we might not be seeing the whole picture in terms of hate crimes committed in the United States. I was able to come up with several reasons why the data might not being completely accurate. The first reason being that the agencies reporting this data to the federal government is doing so on a voluntary basis. This means that not every instance of a hate crime is being reported. Another reason being that hate crimes could easily be mistaken for a crime committed for a different reason by both law enforcement and even possibly the victim. The third reason being that victims don't always report crimes in which they are victims of. Having to think of these reasons for possible inaccuracies helped me to better understand the inherent flaws in social and criminal data.

Humans are flawed. I'm not going to pick up on every possible way a set of data may be inaccurate. However, this assignment gave me a different perspective about data in general. Because of this assignment, I will be more cautious in jumping on the bandwagon and believing everything I read next time I come across a study or article. I think it is imperative that we all learn to be critical thinkers. This assignment helps students to do just that. For that reason I believe this assignment was the most helpful for me.