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Research in Criminal Justice
Before conducting research on the Internet, you should be sure that you are using authoritative or legitimate web sites. Learn how to determine if the site you are visiting is legitimate.
There are a variety of uses for research in criminal justice (how the criminal justice system works) and criminology (why offenders offend). Among the most notable are:
Satisfying one’s own curiosity.
Writing a term paper or completing a related project or assignment.
Enhancing one’s understanding of the causes of delinquency and crime.
Evaluating programs and the social policies which drive them in order improve their effectiveness.
Enlightening the public. Good research provides the public with accurate and needed information.
Finding Articles and Books on Your Topic
If you're looking for articles to read related to a topic you're researching, how about investigating the Criminal Justice Abstracts (visit for access to them by visiting or calling Meyer Library - 836-4535), Sociological Abstracts, or Psychological Abstracts? Access to those and other valuable resources are available online from Missouri State's Meyer Library.
Each of these publications contain abstracts (brief descriptions) of articles published in hundreds of criminal justice, sociology, and/or psychology journals. The abstracts are then organized by topic (i.e., gangs, crime in Canada, females and crime, murder, policing, and many more). You simply explore the cumulative Index (at the back of the last issue of each year) under the topic in which you are interested. You are likely to find several timely and good articles to use in your research. The librarians will be happy to help you learn how to use the Abstracts (some of which are on CD).
Meyer Library, here at Missouri State, has a website that is very useful for any registered student or faculty member to use. A list of excellent Indexes and Databases is available (do a keyword search on your chosen subject at that site) and includes links to such useful sites as Congressional Quarterly Researcher, Facts.com and the SIRS Researcher. Use your UserID and Missouri State password to enter these sites.
Primary Data and Reference Sources
Visit www.fedstats.gov for access to statistics gathered by over 100 federal agencies. Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data (collected from police and sheriffs departments by the Bureau of Justice Statistics - United States Department of Justice) reveals how many people were arrested and what they were arrested for (as well as the demographic characteristics of arrestees). In addition, you will find data on the number of police currently employed and much more. The university's library has hard copies of the UCR under the title Crime in the United States.
You can also visit The Criminal Justice Education Website or the Home Page for the Bureau of Justice Statistics and gain access many more databases. You can easily access United States Crime Statistics (Crime Rate by State from 1960 to 1998 here. The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics is online and a wonderful source of all kinds of information related to crime, public attitudes on crime, arrest statistics and much more.
There are other kinds of data in which you may be interested. Included are the results of national surveys inquiring into such issues as victimization, attitudes towards the courts, the death penalty and gun control and more. One of these is referred to as the General Social Survey. It contains the responses of tens of thousands of people to hundreds of questions and has been doing so for many years. It offers trend data - a valuable way to present data when a researcher is trying to talk about social or attitudinal change over time. Another is the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. Scroll down the website for the Sourcebook to find the Section containing the information you may be seeking.
Additional Resources
If you haven't found what you want using the information above, try the list.
Crime Statistics Link Guide
How convenient! Visit this site for links to crime data nationally, internationally, from states, counties, and cities, university campuses, and for historical crime data. A very handy and useful collection of sites.National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
Be sure to check out "Related Sites." You'll be led to more sites on criminal justice data than you probably wanted to know about. If there's any consolation here it's the fact that the links are sites containing legitimate data.Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
If you're looking for information on the number and types of criminal justice agencies, what it costs to operate the criminal justice system, public attitudes toward crime and criminal justice-related topics, the nature and distribution of known offenses, characteristics of persons arrested, and persons under correctional supervision, this is the place. Published annually as The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, this is the Internet version.Criminal Justice Research and Learning Resources
Included at this site, created by Dr. Charles L. Dreveskracht, are citation and style guides, a guide to evaluating web sites (from which you may be drawing your research data), notes on research methods, sources for criminal justice research, links to selected libraries, notes on statistical methods, and more.Internet Sites Related to Criminal Justice
Includes links to many sources of information of interest to anyone wanting more information on corrections, law, crime, juveniles, probation/parole, policing, criminal justice statistics, research and evaluation studies, drugs and victimology.
On Line Criminal Justice Discussion Groups and E-Journals
Dr. Cecil Greek, a fellow criminologist at Florida State University, has provided links to all of the following on-line journals. He even has some ideas for you to think about regarding the differences between scholarly and non-scholarly periodicals.United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network
If you're looking for information about crime and justice in other nations, here's a great place to start. You will find links to data stored at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice and at the State University of New York at Albany. Additional links will take you to data by whatever country you choose to investigate. NATO, the FBI and the Office of International Criminal Justice are also linked to this page.A Guide to Grammar and Writing
Writing a term paper? Here's the answer to your prayers if you're not sure about how to handle sentences, paragraphs, quotations, etc.
