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: Grits for Breakfast

Public views on actual innocence driven by perceptions, not data

Here's a particularly interesting result from last week's reader poll regarding how many actually innocent people are currently residing in Texas prisons: 70% of readers chose answers outside the range of the various statistical estimates of innocence. The poll asked readers to choose between an array of innocence estimates from various sources (as applied to the Texas prison popuulation), plus an option to choose a greater (5,000 or more) or lesser (less than 1,000) number than any data-driven estimate.Nearly half of readers (47%) thought there are 5,000 or more innocent inmates (out of nearly 160,000) currently locked up in Texas, while 23% thought the total was fewer than 1,000. None of the statistically derived innocence rates received more than 8%...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on September 20, 2009 (boomark / email).