Opinion ID: 415359
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Treatment of Statistical Evidence

Text: 85 Numerical evidence presented at trial, particularly that relating to levels of violence, is misused in the Concurring Opinion in three ways. First, the opinion contrasts, somewhat carelessly, the statistics relating to the incidence of assaults at Maximum with figures gathered at other institutions with only selective regard for the comparability of the respective reporting systems and prison populations. When a reference to comparability is advantageous, it is incorporated in the discussion. But when such favorable references are not available, the Concurring Opinion does not hesitate to evaluate violence statistics without any background information whatsoever. 28 This skewed treatment of the data only compounds the problems created by reliance upon such comparative analysis in the first place. 29 86 Second, the Concurring Opinion makes much of the fact that the average incidence of reported assaults at Maximum is only fifteen per year. But the figure most relevant to the appellees' claims is not the average level of violence over the preceding seven and a half years, but the incidence of violence at the time of the suit. 30 When that statistic is extracted from the record, the situation is revealed to be much more serious than the Concurring Opinion would have us believe. In the preceding six months there had been fifteen reported assaults at Maximum--an average of thirty per year--and the level of violence had been steadily rising since 1978. App. 157-58, 176. 87 An even more serious problem concerns the value of the statistics in question, no matter how they are construed, in assessing conditions at the prison. As testimony at the trial makes evident, very few of the assaults and homosexual rapes committed at Maximum ever find their way into the record books. Fear of reprisal, desire not to be known as a snitch and, in the case of homosexual attacks, reluctance to identify oneself as an easy mark deter victims from reporting such incidents. 31 Under the circumstances, the fact that the prison has records of an inmate assault rate of only thirty per year proves little. Indeed, given the dynamics of the situation, it would seem likely that, as the level of violence and the danger of reprisal increase, the percentage of incidents reported would decrease, thus compounding the problem.