Data on decades of Boy Scout expulsions released

The Los Angeles Times released nearly 5,000 records of allegations from the Boy Scouts of America as a browseable map and searchable list. You can also download the data.

This data­base con­tains in­form­a­tion on about 5,000 men and a hand­ful of wo­men who were ex­pelled from the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica between 1947 and Janu­ary 2005 on sus­pi­cion of sexu­al ab­use. The dots on the map in­dic­ate the loc­a­tion of troops con­nec­ted in some way to the ac­cused. The timeline be­low shows the volume of cases opened by year; however, an un­known num­ber of files were purged by the Scouts pri­or to the early 1990s

The interactive map helps you narrow down by city, but it’s kind of hard to see cases on a country-wide perspective. Here’s a quick look.

The worst part is that a lot of the cases went unreported.

4 Comments

  • Ken Schwencke October 22, 2012 at 11:11 am

    Hi Nathan,

    Each dot doesn’t represent a case, it represents a troop location tied to a person in the files. I’m not sure how you generated your map, but doing a group on city and sizing the bubble would not give you “cases by city”.

    -Ken

    • @Ken – The LA Times map shows troop locations, but their data is by case with location.

    • Or are the lat-lon also just troop locations?

      • Ken Schwencke October 23, 2012 at 12:52 pm

        The data are case files opened for each person, with different records (with the same id) for each troop associated. The locations are locations of troops involved with a person who had a file opened. In the line you quoted above: “The dots on the map in­dic­ate the loc­a­tion of troops con­nec­ted in some way to the accused.”

        -Ken