Forecasting prisoners

Project date range:  2007 – 2008, 2008 – 2009, 2010
Funding institution:  Hessian Ministry of Justice, Justice Authority Hamburg

Description

The development of occupancy rates in prisons is of crucial importance for the judicial administration. Basic factors for planning are seasonal fluctuation, minimum, maximum and average occupancy as well as the present situation und occurences of certain imprisonment categories. The idea accepted in criminology for a long time that prisoner numbers are determined by criminal policy must be regarded as having failed. The project covers analyses of influencing factors from a criminological perspective and then deals with statistical models and time series. It has been found that modelling methods in which the independent variables predict the dependent variable with a time lag are particulary effective.

Methods

Literature analyses, statistics on crimes, prisons and demography, time series modelling.

Publications

• Metz, Rainer & Sohn, Werner (2015). Zur Prognose von Gefangenenzahlen [Forecasting prisoners]. Archiv für Kriminologie 235, 3-4.
• Metz, Rainer & Thome, Helmut (2014). Zeitreihenanalyse [Time series analysis]. Handbuch Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung / hrsg. V. Nina Baur … Wiesbaden: Springer.
• Metz, Rainer (2013). Zeitreihen und Strafvollzugsprognosen [Time series und prison forecasting]. Rechtspsychologie, Kriminologie und Praxis. Festschrift für Rudolf Egg zum 65. Geburtstag / hrsg. von Axel Dessecker … Wiesbaden: KrimZ.
• Sohn, Werner (2013). Die Entwicklung der Gefangenenzahlen. Ein Forschungsdesiderat der Kriminologie [Development of prisoner numbers as a desideratum of criminological research]. Täter, Taten, Opfer. Grundlagenfragen und aktuelle Probleme der Kriminalität und ihrer Kontrolle / hrsg. von Dieter Dölling … Mönchengladbach: Forum Verl. Godesberg.

A summary of our approach (PPSM)