NDLI: Digital Analysis of Crime Statistics: Does Crime Conform to Benford’s Law?

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Hickman, Matthew J. Rice, Stephen K.
Copyright Year	2010
Abstract	Benford’s law suggests that the distribution of leading (leftmost) digits in data of an anomalous nature (i.e., without relationship) will conform to a formula of logarithmic intervals known as the Benford distribution. Forensic auditors have successfully used digital analysis vis-à-vis the Benford distribution to detect financial fraud, while government investigators have used a corollary of the distribution (focused on trailing digits) to detect scientific fraud in medical research. This study explored whether crime statistics are Benford distributed. We examined crime statistics at the National, State, and local level in order to test for conformity to the Benford distribution, and found that National- and State-level summary UCR data conform to Benford’s law. When National data were disaggregated by offense type we found varying degrees of conformity, with murder, rape, and robbery indicating less conformity than other offense types. Some tentative implications of these findings are discussed, as are areas for further research.
Starting Page	333
Ending Page	349
Page Count	17
File Format	PDF
ISSN	07484518
Journal	Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Volume Number	26
Issue Number	3
e-ISSN	15737799
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2010-03-21
Publisher Place	Boston
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Benford’s law Uniform crime reports Digital analysis Crime statistics Fabricated data Data errors First digit Crime data Fraud detection Benford distribution Statistics Methodology of the Social Sciences Sociology Criminology & Criminal Justice
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Law Pathology and Forensic Medicine

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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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