Numbers of Parolees at Large: An Exercise in Data Presentation

(image courtesy CDCR website)

The CDCR website features a story about the Division of Adult Parole Operations' success in bringing about a decline in the numbers of parole absconders in California since the formation of the new Parole Apprehension Team. That, in itself, could be good news (provided that these people should've been under parole supervision in the first place). We'll set aside for the moment the heftier discussion of the growing resemblance between parole operations and policing, and the erosion of the concept of parole as an instrument of hope (read Mona Lynch's terrific ethnography of parole agents for more insight on this mentality). We'll also set aside the question whether reporting a decline in absolute numbers makes sense in an era of supposed parole reform, a regime that ostensibly should focus on high risk parolees and thus produce less parolees in the first place. And we'll even set aside the question of how many of these apprehended absconders were the high risk, violent, dangerous parolees that the public should really be concerned about (hint: the answer is "not many", as many of the absconders are GPS noncompliant sex offenders, whose recidivism rates are among the lowest). Instead, I challenge my readers to take a look at this graph from the story and come up with at least three different faulty things in the data presentation.