How to find statistics for criminal justice representation

If you are interested in discovering hard data to assist your
criminal- justice clients, you will find practical, helpful
information in the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice
Statistics-on line at albany.edu/sourcebook/ - and on the U.S.
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) web site at
ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/

About the Sourcebook
The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics is published
both on paper and online. The 27th edition was published (on
paper) in November, 2000. The online edition is continuously
edited and updated. New data are flagged for the first 30 days
they are online so that you can tell what you may not have
seen before.

You may search the Sourcebook by key words, but you will get
more out of the search if you note the section headings and
what is included in each one. "Characteristics of criminal
justice systems" includes data on expenditures, workloads, and
statutory information in all states. "Public attitudes toward
crime and criminal justice-related topics" includes data from
public opinion polls on victimization, gun control, drug use,
and perceptions of the performance of law-enforcement officers
and the judicial system. "Nature and distribution of known
offenses" presents data on criminal offense occurrence.
"Characteristics and distribution of persons arrested"
includes tabulations of arrestees by age, sex, race, and
geographic area and counts of illegal goods and assets seized.
"Judicial processing of defendants" includes data on juveniles
and adults processed through the courts and on defendant
characteristics, dispositions, and sentences. "Persons under
correctional supervision" includes data on persons on
probation, on parole, or in custody in state or federal
prisons.

BJS Web Site
The foci of the BJS web site include law enforcement,
prosecution, courts and sentencing, corrections, and
expenditure and employment.
The law-enforcement collections include the Law Enforcement
Management and Administrative Statistics, a survey done every
three to four years on state and local law-enforcement
agencies; the Census of State and Local Law Enforcement
Agencies, a basic count of officers; the Survey of Campus Law
Enforcement Agencies, covering 600 agencies serving U.S.
four-year colleges and universities with 2,500 or more
students; the Federal Law Enforcement Agency Census, a survey
of agencies with arrest and firearms authority; the Police
Public Contact Survey, a review pursuant to the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to collect, evaluate,
and publish data on the use of excessive force by law
enforcement personnel; the Survey of State Police Agencies
Information Inventory, a collection of data on police-agency
policies about recording demographic information for
traffic-related contacts and violations; and the Survey of DNA
Crime Laboratories, a data set that includes material on
workloads, personnel, procedures and policies, and other data
on forensic crime laboratories that do DNA tests.
The prosecutors section of the web site includes the National
Survey of Prosecutors, a survey done about every two years.
You will see data on new prosecution techniques, actions
against prosecutors, work-related threats and assaults, and
other data.
The courts and sentencing statistics section includes the
National Judicial Reporting Program, a sample of felony trial
courts in 344 counties with demographic data on felons,
offenses, sentences, and time- from-arrest to conviction and
sentencing; a state and federal court statistics data set; the
Survey of State Court Organization that follows such
developments as specialized courts, automated court
information systems, and the use of the insanity defense; the
National Survey of Indigent Defense Systems, a recent
collection that focuses on caseloads, costs, policies and
practices in indigent defense; and the 2001 Census of Tribal
Justice Agencies in Indian Country, a new survey by the
Justice Department to document matters and issues in the
tribal justice system.
The corrections statistics section includes databases from the
National Prisoner Statistics collection, the National
Corrections Reporting Program, the Capital Punishment
collection, the Annual Survey of Jails, the Census of Jails,
the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, the Census of State and
Federal Correctional Facilities, the Survey of Inmates in
State Correctional Facilities, the Survey of Inmates in
Federal Correctional Facilities, Probation and Parole Data
Surveys, the Inventory of State and Federal Corrections
Information Systems, and the Survey of Adults on Probation.
The expenditure and employment data collections include
extracts relevant to the criminal justice system from the
Census Bureau's Annual Government Finance Survey and Annual
Survey of Public Employment back to 1980. There are some
direct surveys that go back to 1971.