Sex, drugs and body counts: the politics of numbers in global crime and conflict

Review "If you're a journalist, a gluttonous consumer of news, or are easily swayed by the slapdash, stop what you're doing and go buy a copy of Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict. Set aside a couple of hours tonight to read three or four of the essays that academics Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill collected in it. Then, sit down in front of your computer and send me an e-mail to thank me for helping to end your enslavement to the dodgy numbers that taint journalism and public policy. It's not just a good book. It's a great book. And it belongs forever on your bookshelf." -- Jack Shafer ― Slate Product Description At least 200,000-250,000 people died in the war in Bosnia. "There are three million child soldiers in Africa." "More than 650,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." "Between 600,000 and 800,000 women are trafficked across borders every year." "Money laundering represents as much as 10 percent of global GDP." "Internet child porn is a $20 billion-a-year industry." These are big, attention-grabbing numbers, frequently used in policy debates and media reporting. Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill see only one problem: these numbers are probably false. Their continued use and abuse reflect a much larger and troubling pattern: policymakers and the media naively or deliberately accept highly politicized and questionable statistical claims about activities that are extremely difficult to measure. As a result, we too often become trapped by these mythical numbers, with perverse and counterproductive consequences.This problem exists in myriad policy realms. But it is particularly pronounced in statistics related to the politically charged realms of global crime and conflict-numbers of people killed in massacres and during genocides, the size of refugee flows, the magnitude of the illicit global trade in drugs and human beings, and so on. In Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and policy analysts critically examine the murky origins of some of these statistics and trace their remarkable proliferation. They also assess the standard metrics used to evaluate policy effectiveness in combating problems such as terrorist financing, sex trafficking, and the drug trade. Review "This is a terrific, innovative, and coherent volume that combines the insights of The Wire with outstanding recent scholarship. Puncturing many myths―sometimes uncomfortably so―chapters both systematic and vivid show the dangers of basing public policy on numbers that no one should count on, including exaggerating numbers of victims or, the opposite, deliberately downplaying gross state violations. The authors show how and why unreliable numbers persist, what it takes―politically and methodologically―to develop better estimates, and why it matters. Not uncontroversial, Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts will be of great interest to social scientists, policy wonks, and the wider reading public." -- Lynn Eden, Stanford University About the Author THE EDITORS:Peter Andreas is Professor of Political Science at Brown University and holds a joint appointment with the Watson Institute for International Studies. He has published nine books, including Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo (Cornell University Press, 2008); Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (co-author, Oxford University Press, 2006); and, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Cornell University Press, 2nd edition 2009). His latest book is on the politics of smuggling in American history, titled, Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America (Oxford University Press, 2013).Kelly M. Greenhill is Associate Professor at Tufts University and Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affair