Practitioner Guides - Communicating and Interpreting Statistical Evidence in the Administration of Criminal Justice

Four Practitioner Guides are planned. Guide No 1 on the Fundamentals of Probability and Statistical Evidence in Criminal Proceedings was published in November 2010. Guide No 2 on Assessing the Probative Value of DNA Evidence was published in March 2012. Two further guides will be completed by the early part of 2013, focussing on (3) Bayesian networks and inferential reasoning and (4) Case assessment and interpretation. The guides are intended to assist judges, lawyers, forensic scientists and other expert witnesses in coping with the demands of modern criminal litigation.

The Guides are being written by a multidisciplinary team comprising a statistician (Colin Aitken), an academic lawyer (Paul Roberts), and two forensic scientists (Graham Jackson and Roberto Puch-Solis). They are being produced in association with, and with the endorsement of, the Royal Statistical Society, with the generous financial support of the Nuffield Foundation.

The authors stress that ultimate responsibility for the contents of the Guides rests entirely with them, and none of their Working Group colleagues or other advisers and commentators should be assumed to endorse all, or indeed any particular part, of the text.