The Redwood Highway

Crime, Law and Related Links

General Information About Crime

The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics contains a massive amount of quantitative information about offending and offenders, including self-report, victimization and police sources, along with information about the police, courts, corrections, prevention and attitudes about crime. This terrific resource is up again with 1995 data, which is updated monthly. In order to download these files you will need to install Adobe's Acrobat software, which is free.

European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics. Our European friends' counterpart to the U.S. Sourcebook.

University of Michigan Statistical Resources. This site link provides a pretty good collection of crime related resources for general users. You can also go to their site index for more specific (or general) information.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's 2008 (and earlier) Crime in the United States, which is available in either html, excel and/or pdf; the latter requires (free) Acrobat software. This site also contains hate crime data; current and past issues of the Law Enforcement Bulletin ; NCIC --National Crime Information Center publication; NIBRS, and others.

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Reports. Here's a gateway to an agency with a vast number of reports on crime.

The latest National Crime Victimization Survey, Criminal Victimization, 2007, published in 2008
Crime and Justice Electronic Data Abstracts provides the actual spreadsheet data that is the basis for many of their reports.
Survey of State Procedures Related to Firearm Sales, Midyear 2004. An informative and timely review of the state of firearms rules and procedures across the states.

Chicago Crime Database. This is a way cool database of crime for the city of Chicago, which is tied in with Google somehow, so that you get Google maps of Chicago's crime issues. There's also a dashboard widget.

Council of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) and its mirror sites in the United Kingdom and Australia. The CESSDA facilitates the distribution and sharing of electronic data for social science education and research in Europe.

The Crime Mapping Research Center. This site is devoted to crime mapping and spatial analysis. Mapping Crime: Principle and Practice, in pdf. This is about three and a half megabytes. A detailed look at the crime mapping phenomenon.

http://www.mapsexoffenders.com/.

Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center (FJSRC), funded by the US BJS and maintained by the Urban Institute.

Counting California. Lots of statistics about California, including those related to crime.

Geostat: Geospatial and Statistical Data Center. Tons and tons of data and informationm such as annotated listings of graphical and statistical inks, instructional materials relevant to social and hard sciences, and much more.

This Number Crunchers Precision Journalism web site displays the eight UCR Index Offenses for major cities in easy-to-read tables.

The National Criminal Justice Reference Service is a key place to search for a wide variety of documents on crime and criminal justice. Some documents are available for free and others for a fee. The NCJRS Abstracts Database is also on-line. It has abstracts for over 145,000 justice publications, including government documents, books, journal articles, unpublished reports, and other matters from the 1970's-present. This resource is updated and free for now.

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (Michigan).

IASSIST - International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology

Murray Research Center. This research center claims to have the "nation's largest social science data archive on human development across the life span." It is a nicely laid out site and provides free help but data requests require application/registration. This seems to be a researcher's dream come true.

The National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at Cornell University.

The General Social Survey Data and Information Retrieval System (GSSDIRS) is available. This is a data set that has been almost continuously collected since the early 1970s. It has relevant data on opinions and facts about crime, bibliographies, question wordings, reports, case-level analysis and sub-setting, trend tables, and much more. If this is not satisfactory you may wish to try the GSS Surveys at this web page. Once you arrive there go to Q SOFT or Social Sciences Resources.

The Government Information Sharing Project contains a variety of online government data, including crime, economic and other data, that can be aggregated at different levels and over time. A useful source for many research purposes.
The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (updated link 5.15.04) contains over 500 data collections relating to criminal justice. The site provides you with both documentation and a means of downloading information.

The Data Archive of the University of Essex has over 7,000 databases (!) of secondary data for analysis. The site also contains information about funding opportunities.

The Crime Statistics Site, provides some introductory information about the location of crime data, limitations of data sources, how crime rates are calculated, and how you can calculate your own! This is a useful site for students who are learning the ropes of crime statistics.

The University of Michigan's extensive Statistical Resources on the Web, which includes crime.

Atlas of United States Mortality by race, region, gender, etc.

RACE Are We So Different? A helpful link for researchers and kids about what race means. Instructive in thinking about crime.

Foreclosure to Homelessness: the Forgotten Victims of the Subprime Crisis. One step away from more serious problems. From the National Coalition for the Homeless

A quick link to search on any topic worldwide, especially crime.

SEARCH -- The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics. A nonprofit consortium whose major objective is to assist local and state justice agencies in information exchange.There are special projects on Drug Courts, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Law Enforcement IT, Integrated Justice and others. There is a lot more here.

State and County QuickFacts -- US Census. You can readily access frequently needed Census Bureau information here at the national, state, and county level. Another fabulous resource for those needing numbers.

Department of Health and Human Services-Substance Abuse. Results of the 2003 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. A more recent survey by the same agency on Children Living with Substance-Dependent or Substance-Abusing Parents: 2002 to 2007

The National Crime Victimization Survey, which deals with the elderly.

The National Center for Education Statistics has a great deal of information on safety in the schools. See their Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2004. One in an annual series on school crime and safety that also describes victim characteristics.

Survey of State Procedures Related to Firearm Sales. Firearms laws by state--the latest information. Scroll down to find the year you want.

Violence in the Workplace, 1993-99. It's in pdf, so you'll need Acrobat (see above).

Center for Disease Control, Report on Nation's Health.

"American Sexual Behavior: Trends, Socio-Demographic Differences, and Risk Behavior," by Tom W. Smith at NORC. Offers reliable estimates on the annual (max 4%) and lifetime (max 17%) prevalence of extramarital affairs, among other relevant statistics. Look at the popular media for reasons most peope are misinformed about the issue. People seeking to justify affairs or other nonconventional sex activities will not find support for their activities in this study of what behavior people report they actually do.

Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools: 1996-97. The National Center for Education Statistics on violence in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. The data are from the summer of 1997 and based on a survey of principals.

The Census of Population and Housing contains 1990+ Census data, even in spreadsheet form, for US jurisdictions from 1980, population counts for the US and world, etc.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. U.S. Welfare caseload information by state, before and after welfare reform. Updated regularly.

The The 2007 Statistical Abstract--the genuine article, with links to all prior census data going back to 1878. The current report is in Excel format but earlier ones are in pdf. There is a subject index but it's a little hard to find the statistical tables you need.

The World Wide Web Virtual Library offers a topical search engine and links to the on-line legal community in the US. This site is maintained by the Bloomington, Indiana School of Law.

The Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, a nifty, updated collection of firms that face class action lawsuits, brought to you by the Stanford Law School."The Securities Class Action Clearinghouse provides detailed information relating to the prosecution, defense, and settlement of federal class action securities fraud litigation. "

FACTNet International Digest, a non-profit Internet digest, library, news service, dialogue center, and archive dedicated to the defense and promotion of global free speech, free thought, and privacy rights.
Fedworld and Fedweb, very good federal web site search engines.

The Government Printing Office has the Congressional Record, the full text of bills, and unrestricted access to the Federal Register, among many other items of interest.
The latest U.S. Government Printing Office's Federal Register Database.

Pandemic Flu Home

Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) Science and Engineering Statistics Publications, data, and analyses about the nation's science and engineering resources

Criminal Justice: A Selective Guide to the Research Literature, from the University of Minnesota.

SSU Library's subject guide to crime information.