I’m not a big fan of focus groups (when it comes to businesses figuring out what customers want) for a number of reasons.
First, they are unnatural settings with a very high degree of scrutiny, which may distort how people respond. Second, it seems likely that people will tend to say what they think others expect them to say, or what the people organizing the focus group might want them to say. Third, I suspect that one or two vocal participants can sway the responses of the others who are present. Fourth, in general I am more interested in what people do than what they say.
It is hard not to like this focus group, run by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, unless of course you were one of the attendees. Advertised as a holiday-shopper focus group, it was really a trick to catch fugitives.
More than 60 eager criminals showed up. The fact that they were being promised $500 to take part in the activity should have been a dead giveaway. When people like my mom are willing to participate for $50, there is no need to pay $500.
The most surprising thing of all is that of the 60-plus fugitives who showed up, only one was carrying marijuana.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Creative, legal, but unethical, granted dealing with unetical people.
they send it to the fugatives last known, which most likely is friends or family. to increase the likelihood of their comrades passing the information along to the convict, they ‘sweeten the deal’ by offering $500, because $50 isn’t enough to really bother with since the friend or family will want a cut.
I don’t think the police are going to be sued. These guys are criminals and should be detained anyway. It’s legal for cops to lie to people they’re trying to arrest.
From my understanding it is not quite illegal for the police to lie for purposes of apprehending or questioning someone suspected of a crime.
Interestingly, this was the exact plot-line of an episode of the ITV TV series “The Bill” earlier this year. I wonder if the Sheriff’s a fan.
First – to the question of why can’t they be picked up at their homes, the county determined it would be quicker and cheaper to round them up this way. Presumably they are not violent criminals, but delinquent dads and others that have committed non-violent crimes (although I don’t put a whole lot of faith in any part of the Cook County government).
Second – this doesn’t compare to the ruse set up in North Dakota, where they used free Ozzy Osbourne tickets as the bait.
They tried something similar in NYC in 1999 with free Metrocards mailed to suspects- here is a link http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E1DA1F3BF936A35752C1A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
I thought it was a clever idea but it was quickly cancelled in response to criticism.
Focus groups research is very tricky to do properly. When academics do it, and do it with rigor, the unit of analysis is the entire focus group.
In other words, you can’t break down answers to the individual paritcipants, in part because of the reasons Levitt lists.
This doesn’t mean that they can’t be useful. Rather, it means — in my view — that they are best use as part of a larger protocol, perhaps a prelimary step to gather issues to validate by other means.
Like most law enforcement moves, it’s done for the process, not the the outcome. The effect is many more prisoners receiving free security, room and board, utilities, cable TV, medical care, legal representation, and coffee and cigarettes.
So they (LEO’s) save a few bucks from having to go arrest them (which they weren’t going to do anyway). They weren’t going to go arrest them in person because they are posing no threat unless the same circumstances as their crime present again – usually drugs, or drunk, altercation, weapon handy, and no affect control.
Bottom line is most jail prisoners (local with <1 year sentences, not penitentiary) are in jail because they violated probation (+80%), not in a criminal way but in an administrative way (missed appointment, failed drug test, associated with “known associates”). It’s a system run for the benefit of the prison officials, attorneys, and law enforcement officials – not society. Society (meaning us) merely get to pay the infinite upward spiraling cost of doing nothing about crime while running communal concrete boarding houses without any vacancies vacancies.