FROM POISSON TO THE PRESENT - APPLYING OPERATIONS-RESEARCH TO PROBLEMS OF CRIME AND JUSTICE

In the 1830s Simeon-Denis Poisson developed the distribution that bear s his name, basing it on the binomial distribution. He used it to show how the inherent variance in jury decisions affected the inferences t hat could be made about the probability of conviction in French courts . In recent years there have been a number of examples where researche rs have either ignored or forgotten this inherent variance, and how op erations research, in particular mathematical modeling, can be used to incorporate this variance in analyses. These are described in this pa per, as well as other contributions made by operations research to the study of crime and criminal justice.