Orville Taylor | Let’s judge the numbers

Despite learning my mathematics only in English class, numbers are indispensable for making assertions. One cannot disregard statistics, simply because they do not match a narrative, but when they are favourable, hug them up.

Many a belief have been shattered by the ordinary task of just bothering to check facts. For example, choking on the evidence, there are those who simply cannot accept that the JA Kids longitudinal ‘census’ covering 84 per cent of children born across several years, put the lie to the misconception that most Jamaicans men are absent from their children’s lives. Fact! The involvement numbers polled somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent. Given that it covered such a large percentage of the population, there is zero margin of error.

Suck it up!

Another example is the constant decrying of the negatives in the justice system, especially regarding backlogs and poor throughput in cases. So, guess what? The Judiciary engaged trained social scientists from the plantation, University of the West Indies, to investigate the extent of the inefficiency.

And not surprisingly, the numbers did not match the beliefs. Of course, there were cases lagging and many brought forward. However, as the St Mary Parish Court realised, the problem was not as big as typified, and using a systemic (sociological) approach, built on partnerships and consensus, they cut the numbers like bananas during reaping time.

Until we find a better methodology, surveys via questionnaires, and other such instruments are the best ways of obtaining large amounts of social data, especially those used for policymaking.

HAVE TO BE CAREFUL

True, survey are only as good as the quality of the data which are input. Thus, we have to be careful as to what questions we ask, as well as the thinking behind those questions, in order to accurately measure whatever we are trying to assess.

If, for example, we ask our respondents, “Do you believe that government is somewhat corrupt?”; We might get a negative answer. However, we really ought to have asked, if the individual believed that the word somewhat was a euphemism, and the words ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ ought to have been inserted.

In this column I have had to run several tutorials regarding the studies carried out for Transparency International by our local and international stakeholders, all experts in the field of social research. To great pains I have gone to explain that the corruption perception index (CPI) only reflects the belief of the people regarding the level of corruption.

Notwithstanding that, the survey instruments actually do ask pointed questions which measure corruption. And for the last time I hope in this column, I will report that in the global survey carried a decade ago, most Jamaicans reported that they had never had to pay a bribe to anyone.

At the top of the list, 12 per cent of Jamaicans indicated that they had given money or someone close to them had done so, to the police. We cannot simply discard this finding, because of its disruptiveness to the popular narrative. Jumping to our neighbours to the north, and to the place where our final appellate court lies, the survey found that 15 and 21 per cent of residents in the US and UK, respectively, reported that they know personally of bribes being paid to a judge.

Not being an officer of the court as my other colleagues who hosts talk shows on 94 FM, my burden is an allegiance to the laws of science and not some timid canons of the legal profession, where one is forced to tiptoe and refrain from any kind of statement that the judiciary is imperfect.

With great pleasure and national pride, I was happy that the number relating the Jamaican judiciary was a mere six per cent. Of course, I ignored the quiet cacophony as insecure people fought against the data, about bringing the evidence. No one asked those questions in regard to any of the other responses, and importantly, many of those ringing the ‘assert/evidence dialectic in my ear nitpick the surveys in their conversations and love citing the CPI. Either discard the evidence as a whole, as one does in a court, or use it and treat it as valid.

OTHER BITS OF QUALIFICATION

Yet, in the details of how we arrived at those numbers, we may find other bits of qualification which makes an understanding of the data more wholesome.

Most attorneys in Jamaica went to the same universities, high and and law schools as the judges. Indeed, many of them are friends. Now come on! We have irrefutable evidence that thankfully a minority of attorneys are crooks and we are talking about those who we know are; not those who are yet to be caught. It is very possible that some of these scoundrels may very well purport to be greasing the palm of a judge and their clients foolishly believe this. Nevertheless, unless ‘Milud’ and ‘Milady’, and ‘Your Honour’ had a star in the east when they were born, and an angel convincing their father that unlike one-fourth of Jamaican men, that there is no misplaced fatherhood; then we have to accept the possibility, that a tiny fraction of an imperfect group of human beings is venal.

Notwithstanding all of this, what the survey and the data say is that the Jamaican judges are of a much higher moral fibre and fabric than those in our neighbours to the north and paradoxically, in the land of the King, where a body of more flawed judges have oversight over our semifinal appellate courts.

Amazingly, this decade-long observation was lost on the minds on some of our most learned minds in this country, who failed to see the praise and pride behind the data.

But then again, sometimes people hold on to narratives and never bother to check the evidence. By the way, did you know that Edith Clarke’s My Mother who Fathered Me was about the minority 30 per cent of homes with absent parents?

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.