In his astute and timeless book, How to Lie with Statistics, Darrell Huff writes, “The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify.” This statement is at least as true as it was in 1954 when it was first published. Among the subjects most prone to statistical abuse: criminal justice. Our guest today on Sea Change Radio is Peter Calloway, an outspoken public defender whose Twitter thread about crime in San Francisco went a little bit viral last week. In the first half of our two-part conversation, we discuss the significance of US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is not only the first Black woman to serve on the highest court, but also the first public defender. We also talk about the role of the public defender’s office and why people tend to fall for sensationalized crime statistics.
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