Abstract
Abstract. Suppose that the word of an eyewitness makes it 80% probable that A
committed a crime, and that B is drawn from a population in which the incidence
rate of that crime is 80%. Many philosophers and legal theorists have held that
if this is our only evidence against those parties then (i) we may be justified in
finding against A but not against B; but (ii) that doing so incurs a loss in the
accuracy of our findings. This paper argues against (ii). It argues that accuracy
considerations can motivate taking different attitudes towards individualized and
statistical evidence even across cases where they generate the same probability
that the defendant is guilty.