Patrick Ball (born June 26, 1965) is an American statistician known for his quantitative analysis of human rights violations. He has provided statistical analysis for

truth commission A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state ac ...

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

s, international criminal tribunals, and ''United Nations'' missions. As Director of Research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, he conducts statistical analyses to document patterns of human rights abuses.

Education

Ball earned a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, and a doctorate from the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

in 1998.

Human rights and cryptography export controls

In the 1990s, Ball advocated for the availability of cryptographic technology amid the debates over its export by U.S. software developers. In 1993, he began working with the Science and Human Rights Program of the AAAS, initially as a consultant and eventually as deputy director. His work with the AAAS included traveling to

El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...

and

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

to train local human rights organizations on the use of cryptography and the internet to protect their communications. The Science and Human Rights Program also organized or co-organized symposiums, including a congressional briefing at which Ball presented alongside

Matt Blaze Matt Blaze is an American researcher who focuses on the areas of secure systems, cryptography, and trust management. He is currently the McDevitt Chair of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University, and is on the board of directors of the ...

, Ian Goldberg, and Dinah PoKempner. In 1997, Ball provided testimony in '' ACLU v. Miller'', a case from the civil liberties group challenging a Georgia law barring online pseudonymity as unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.

Expert testimony in war crimes trials

Ball testified at the

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes in the Yugoslav Wars, war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to tr ...

against Slobodan Milosevic. He also testified as a witness for the Prosecution at the

in Milutinović et al. (IT-05-87). In 2013, Ball provided testimony in

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

in the trial of General José

Efraín Ríos Montt José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer, politician, and dictator who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the blo ...

, the de facto president of

in 1982-1983. Ríos was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. Ball also testified in 2013 in the trial of Guatemala's former national police chief, Héctor Rafael Bol de la Cruz, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the disappearance of a student union leader. In September 2015, Ball testified in the trial of former President of Chad,

Hissène Habré Hissène Habré (Arabic: ''Ḥusaīn Ḥabrī'', Chadian Arabic: ; ; 13 August 1942 – 24 August 2021), also spelled Hissen Habré, was a Chadian politician and convicted war criminal who served as the 5th president of Chad from 1982 unt ...

. The analysis from HRDAG revealed that the death rate for political prisoners was significantly higher than that of adult men in Chad. During a nine-month span from 1986 to 1987, the mortality rate in Habré's prisons surpassed that of U.S. POWs held by the Japanese during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Awards

Patrick Ball was awarded the John Maddox Prize in 2024 by the Nature Awards and

Sense About Science Sense about Science is a United Kingdom charitable organization that promotes the public understanding of science. Sense about Science was founded in 2002 by Lord Taverne, Bridget Ogilvie and others to promote respect for scientific evidence an ...

for his work in identifying, cataloguing and prosecuting war crimes using statistical and mathematical modeling. In 2018, the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 27, 1839, and is the second-oldest continuous ...

gave Ball the Karl E. Peace Award for Outstanding Statistical Contributions for the Betterment of Society. Ball was conferred a Doctor of Science honoris causa by

Claremont Graduate University The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California, United States. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium which includes five undergraduate and two grad ...

in 2015. In 2014, he was named a Fellow by the

. Other awards include the Pioneer Award from the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

in 2005, the Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science from the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM) in June 2004, and a Special Achievement Award from the Social Statistics Section of the

in 2002. He is a Research Fellow at the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Human Rights Science, and a Fellow at the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Selected publications

* Amelia Hoover Green and Patrick Ball (2019). Civilian killings and disappearances during civil war in El Salvador (1980–1992). Demographic Research, 1 October 2019. * Patrick Ball and Megan Price (2019). Using Statistics to Assess Lethal Violence in Civil and Inter-State War. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application. 7 March 2019. * Patrick Ball and Megan Price (2018). The Statistics of Genocide. Chance (special issue). February 2018. * Patrick Ball (2016). The case against a golden key. Foreign Affairs. September 14, 2016. Foreign Affairs. * Patrick Ball (2016). Violence in blue. Granta 134: 4 March 2016. * Patrick Ball (2016). Why Just Counting the Dead in Syria Won’t Bring Them Justice. Foreign Policy. October 19, 2016. * Megan Price and Patrick Ball (2014). Big Data, Selection Bias, and the Statistical Patterns of Mortality in Conflict. SAIS Review of International Affairs. * Price, Megan, Jeff Klingner, and Patrick Ball (2013). Preliminary Statistical Analysis of Documentation of Killings in the Syrian Arab Republic, The Benetech Human Rights Program, commissioned by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). * Patrick Ball. When It Comes to Human Rights, There Are No Online Security Shortcuts, Wired op-ed, August 10, 2012. * Patrick Ball (2008). “¿Quién le hizo qué a quién? Planear e implementar un proyecto a gran escala de información en derechos humanos.” (originally in English at AAAS) Translated by Beatriz Verjerano. Palo Alto, California: Benetech. * Patrick Ball, Tamy Guberek, Daniel Guzmán, Amelia Hoover, and Meghan Lynch (2007). “Assessing Claims of Declining Lethal Violence in Colombia.” Benetech. Also available in Spanish – “Para Evaluar Afirmaciones Sobre la Reducción de la Violencia Letal en Colombia.” * Patrick Ball, Ewa Tabeau, and Philip Verwimp (2007). “The Bosnian Book of the Dead: Assessment of the Database (Full Report).” Households in Conflict Network Research Design Note 5. * Silva, Romesh and Patrick Ball, "The Profile of Human Rights Violations in Timor-Leste, 1974-1999", a Report by the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group to the Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. 9 February 2006. * Silva, Romesh, and Patrick Ball. "The Demography of Large-Scale Human Rights Atrocities: Integrating demographic and statistical analysis into post-conflict historical clarification in Timor-Leste." Paper presented at the 2006 meetings of the Population Association of America. * Silva, Romesh and Patrick Ball. "The Demography of Conflict-Related Mortality in Timor-Leste (1974-1999): Empirical Quantitative Measurement of Civilian Killings, Disappearances & Famine-Related Deaths" In Papers on Human Rights and Statistics, D. Banks, J. Asher and F. Scheuren, eds., ASA/SIAM Monograph Series, Philadelphia, PA (USA), pp. 42–57. * Ball, Patrick. "On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations." in Repression and Mobilization, ed. by Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol Mueller. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P. 2005. * Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Perú, Final Report - General Conclusions * Davenport, Christian, and Patrick Ball. "Views to a Kill: Exploring the Implications of Source Selection in the Case of Guatemalan State Terror, 1977-1996." Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(3): 427-450. 2002. * Killings and Refugee Flow in Kosovo, March - June, 1999 * * Chapman, Audrey R. and Patrick Ball. "The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala." Human Rights Quarterly. 23(4):1-42. 2001 * Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March–May 1999 * Political Killings in Kosovo * Making the Case: Investigating Large Scale Human Rights Violations Using Information Systems and Data Analysis. (ed. with Herbert F. Spirer and Louise Spirer). Washington, DC: AAAS, 2000. * State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: a Quantitative Reflection. (with Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer) Washington, DC: AAAS, 1999. * Who Did What to Whom? Planning and Implementing a Large Scale Human Rights Data Project. Washington, DC: AAAS, 1996.

Education

Human rights and cryptography export controls

Expert testimony in war crimes trials

Awards

Selected publications

References

External links