Roman holiday

I have to admit, when I first read about this I snickered, then I started thinking about it, and i thought, "To the Hydrablog!".

Italy released 12,000 prisoners early (those with less than 3 years to go, certain crimes excempted) in an effort to releave prison overcrowding. Most papers are reporting a ruslting crime spree. However, in The Week Magazine's coverage (sorry no link-you have to buy the hard copy August 18, pg 6) also under "crime wave" says that "in less than a week several dozen were rearrested." Now I'm no mathmatician, but call in 24 out of 12,000 in a country with a population of about 60 million and it just doesn't qualify as a crime wave. I'm hamstrung by lack of follow-up data, but .002% hardly seems like evidence of a bad policy. I'm willing to bet that most people, on any project, would be happy with a 99.008 percent sucess rate. Furthermore, now the prisons can easily hold those rearrested.

I want to be clear, I'm not backing the Italian policy, my point with this entry is to point out how the headlines may not match the reality. Especially given that all the reports I found (except The Week) call it a "crime wave/spree" without mentioning how may crimes were commited, by how many of the released, or even to what degree crime rose over the period mentioned compared to previous periods. The reader has no reasonable base to draw their own conclusion.

Again, when it comes to numbers and reporting, you have to be careful.