Criminal Justice Research & Statistics Research Guide

Library resources that index and link to scholarly journal articles

Here is a selection of databases that will help you find peer-reviewed articles. Contact me for further suggestions.

• Criminal Justice Abstracts
  Covers crime trends, crime prevention and deterrence, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, police, courts and sentencing.
• NCJRS (National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts)
  Contains summaries of more than 190,000 publications including books, government reports; research reports; and unpublished research. It also includes content from 189 journals, including 12 with core coverage.
• Sociological Abstracts
  Covers scholarly journals in the field of sociology.
• Social Services Abstracts
  Covers current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas.
• ERIC
  The ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to educational-related literature. It indexes both journal articles and reports from government and private agencies.
• PsycINFO
  Indexes journals, dissertations and some books in the fields of personality psychology, social psychology, educational psychology and more.

Helpful tips and suggestions

Tip #1:  Your gateway to the full text of journal articles.

Full text online:  Links to the full text online are listed first, if the Library has access.
Holdings information:  Click on the link to the Library's catalog to find out whether the Library has a print subscription.
ILL:  Submit an interlibrary loan request and you will get a digital version of the article via e-mail. This can take 1-2 weeks.

Tip #2:  Search multiple databases simultaneously.

This works for all the databases listed above.  Click on the Specific Databases link below the search box after you logged into Sociological Abstracts or any of the other databases. You will be prompted to select from a list of databases. Select the databases that you would like to include into your search and click on Continue to Search. The search screen will identify your selections under Now selected.

Tip #3:  Export references in APA style for your cited reference list.

Check off all articles in which you are interested and click on Save, Print, Email. The QuickBib feature has a selection of styles available from which you can choose. APA is the most widely used style in the social sciences.

Criminal Justice Statistics

• Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics
  Federal crime statistics on a wide variety of subjects from crime and victims, to criminal offenders and courts and sentencing. Data sets for analysis available online.
• Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
  Presents a broad spectrum of criminal justice data from more than 100 sources in 6 sections.
• Uniform Crime Report - FBI
  Crime in the United States (CIUS) is an annual publication in which the FBI compiles volume and rate of crime offenses for the nation, the states, and individual agencies. This report also includes arrest, clearance, and law enforcement employee data. 
• Uniform Crime Report - Pennsylvania State Police
• Statistical Abstract of the United States
  Sec. 5: Law Enforcement, Courts, Prisons.
  Yearly publication by the Census Bureay. Available online back to 1878.
• Lexis-Nexis Statistical Publications & Data Sets.
  Includes mapping software for customized maps.
• ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)
  The world's largest archive of digital social science data. Data files can be downloaded into SPSS, SAS, Stata, or Excel.

Encyclopedias

The Library has a large number of subject specific online encyclopedias with up-to-date articles on your paper topic. They will lead you to exhaustive and well-researched articles that are written and signed by scholars. Jump start your research with valuable background information, a detailed overview and/or a bibliography of current research. Here are two examples of typical encyclopedia articles:

• "Delinquency, III. Trends and Data." Encyclopedia of Juvenile Justice. 2002.
• "Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA)." Encyclopedia of Measurement and Statistics. 2006.

Research Methods Reference Books

• Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods
• Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods
• Encyclopedia of Measurement & Statistics
• Encyclopedia of Evaluation
• Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods

Criminal Justice Reference Books

• Encyclopedia of Crime & Justice
• Encyclopedia of Crime & Punishment
• Encyclopedia of Juvenile Justice
• Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement
• Encyclopedia of Murder & Violent Crime
• Encyclopedia of Prisons & Correctional Facilities

For more criminal justice encyclopedias consult the Criminal Justice Subject Guide.

Books

• The Library's online catalog

keyword search:  "capital punishment" AND statistics
subject search: "criminal statistics" AND Pennsylvania

• WorldCat
  A catalog of library holdings worldwide. WorldCat will indicate any local library holdings and also offers an inter-library loan request option.
• Dissertations & Theses Full Text
• E-Z Borrow and Interlibrary Loan
  Interlibrary loan is available for books and journals that are not owned by Falvey. EZ-Borrow is usually faster than interlibrary loan, since the books come from a local library network. EZ-Borrow can be used for books that the Library owns, but that are currently checked out by somebody else.

Citing your sources

• Documenting Source in APA Style:
  Research and Documentation Online by Diana Hacker.
• Refworks
  Never type a bibliography again! RefWorks will help you easily gather, manage, and store bibliographic citations for all types of information, as well as generate footnotes and bibliographies.

Make an appointment to meet with Jutta

I am happy to meet with you at any time, in person, by phone, or virtually via our chat service.

You can also email me directly.