Some folks wondered at the odd "statistics" found on web page http://www.csrpac.org/Pages/StatisticsAndInfo.html

I asked the web page owner how to decode the sub-standard way of doing statistics and I received a reply.

The line "3,000 program participants" is utterly meaningless, as they were still in prison at the time Scientology Inc. generated these "statistics." All that matters is people who completed the program and were released from prison.

The data claims that out of 1,682 Ensenada Mexico prison inmates, 168 were returned to the Ensenada prison during a time span of six years. As was already reported elsewhen on a.r.s. and elsewhere, the data ignores the ex-prisoners who later went to DIFFERENT prisons.

The data also ignores changing arrest rates: in a six-year time span, the number of arrests for ALL PEOPLE will fluctuate--- new laws being created, laws being differentially enforced, etc.

The data as presented on the web page is utterly nonsensical. It claims that 6 out of 1,682 completed four of the five Scientology rituals which gives the "0.40%" (0.3567%) recidivism rate (let's ignore Scientology Inc.'s fractions of people). This itself appears to be a fraudulent "statistic:" if only six completed the program out of 1,682, how do they know what percentage of that 168 re-arrested contains that six? Note they are not applying that 6 to the 168 re-arrested: they apply that 6 to the 1,682 released from prison. This is important for the following:

If all six of those who completed the program are included in the 168 re-convictions, that means the program has a zero success rate. If 5 were re-convicted, that's a success rate of 1/6th. (Etc.)

All the other numbers are utterly meaningless. Such as:

If only 91 out of 1,682 completed Scientology Inc.'s [fraudulent and worthless] "detox" step (the 5.41%), THAT HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH RECIDIVISM. Why even list it? Where is the figure showing how many of that 91 went back to prison? The email I received stated "For example, the recidivism rate for those completing just the first step was approximately 9% (91 individuals)." *WRONG!* That would be a return rate of 54.16%--- he applied the 91 individuals to the 168 figure and not the correct 1,682 figure.

The data claims that 1,558 completed the program and out of that 1,558 *NONE* have been re-convicted / sent back to prison.

The rest of the numbers do similar things.

The data is utterly worthless; the "study" shows no demographic controls---- what was the recidivism rate for inmates who did *NOT* go through the program? Usuaing the same fraudulent criteria (looking only at one prison instead of all prisons an ex-convict could be resent to), did Scientology Inc.'s rituals do better or worse than other programs; than no program at all?

====== begin quote of e-mail sent to me ======

I believe you are referring to the following statistics:

"Second Chance" Program Stats - Ensenada, Mexico: 3000 program participants 1682 released over 6 years Only 168 returned to prison during that six year period Total completing the initial detox step 91 5.4% Total completing the entire Drug Rehab Module 14 0.8% Total completing the Education Module 13 0.8% Total completing the Self _Respect Module 6 0.40% TOTAL COMPLETING THE ENTIRE PROGRAM 0 0.00%

I can see that the data presentation gives the impression that the last line was referring to "The TOTAL number of participants COMPLETING THE ENTIRE PROGRAM 0 0.00%

A better way to present the data is as follows:

1682 individuals who had participated in the program had been released over a period of 6 years. The remainder were still in the prison completing their sentences.

Of these 1682 individuals, only 168 had been returned to prison during this time period. This gives a recidivism rate of approximately 10%.

There are a number of modules or steps in the entire program which are done in an exact sequence. The next series of statistics refers to the number of individuals returned that had completed various steps of the program. This is a breakdown of the 10% overall recidivism statistic (and recidivism rates for all components of the program were not presented - I've corrected the rates for the ones shown).

For example, the recidivism rate for those completing just the first step was approximately 9% (91 individuals)

This leads to the final statistic - the recidivism rate for those competing the entire program was 0% (0 individuals returned to prison when they had completed the entire program).

Thanks very much for your inquiry. We are in the process of completely redoing our website. The new version should be online by the 17th of October.

For more information about the Narconon program and its sister organization, Criminon, please visit their respective sites at Narconon.org and Criminon.org

--- RE-ELECT PRESIDENT GORE IN 2004 http://lastliberal.org

"I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons." --- Bush2

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