Crime and Justice

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Bureau of Justice Statistics (U.S. Department of Justice)
Lots of information and reports, with links to downloadable data at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data at ICPSR. Data in spreadsheet (wk1) format is available directly on the site.

Campus Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool (Office of Postsecondary Education, U.S. Dept. of Education)
This site provides a searchable database of campus crime statistics for over 6000 colleges and universities. Users can opt between three kinds of reports: data from one institution or campus (past 3 years); aggregated data for a group of campuses (past 3 years); data download for a group of campuses (back to 2001). Crime statistics are divided into three categories: criminal offenses, hate crimes, and arrests/disciplinary actions.

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (U.S.Department of State)
Includes reports from 1996 to the present. Part of a larger web site belonging to the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) which includes other reports on topics such as ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, religious freedom, child labor and more.

Crime and Justice Data Online (Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice)
Crime and Justice Data Online contains a number of studies directly related to crime statistics in the United States. Included are Crime Trends from the FBI's Uniform Crime reports, homicide trends by state and by city as well as law enforcement and administrative statistics. Users can select variables online and receive data as HTML tables or .csv files.

CrimeStat III (National Institute of Justice and Inter-University Consortium on Political and Social Research (ICPSR))
CrimeStat III is a Windows-based spatial statistics program, sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and available for download at the ICPSR website. The program is used by police departments and researchers to analyze crime incident locations. CrimeStat III allows for spatial distribution analysis, distance analysis, space-time analysis, journey to crime analysis, and crime travel demand modeling. The CrimeStat download is accompanied by sample datasets and a user manual.

Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center (FJSRC) (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics and Urban Institute)
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics through the Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center "compiles comprehensive information describing suspects and defendants processed in the Federal criminal justice system. The goal of FJSRC is to provide uniform case processing statistics across all stages of the Federal criminal justice system. Using data obtained from Federal agencies, FJSRC compiles comprehensive information that describes person-cases processed through the system." Users can download compressed ASCII versions of Standard Analysis File (SAF) data sets (free registration required), generally going back as far as 1994. For fiscal years 1978-1994, the SAFs are archived at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/) as ICPSR Study Number 9296. The site offers a menu-based tablemaker that they describe as “Online Analysis” to display and download tables from selected data sets, going back to the year 2000. In addition, the site carries an archive of publications including annual, technical and special topic reports.

International Study on Firearm Regulation (United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network)
The International Study on Firearm Regulation covered a total of 78 nations, with initial surveys going out to 50 nations in 1996. Data was compiled first in 1997, then in 1999 with new countries added and updates to some of the originally-responding countries. The questionnaire included a mix of quantitative and qualitative (narrative) questions, focusing on the following questions related to civilian firearm regulation, use and ownership. Topics include: firearm regulation; manufacturing and trade; smuggling and other illegal dealings; demographic and crime statistics; and policy and public education initiatives. Data is available for download as a zipped MS-Access97 database.

Internet Center for Corruption Research (Transparency International and Goettingen University)
This center provides the Corruption Perception Index, which ranks countries by the extent of perceived corruption in public administration. Every country is provided with an individual score, allowing for cross-country comparisons. Annual reports begin in 1995; data is in HTML tables only from 1995-1999, and from 2000 on is also available in Excel spreadsheets.

MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base (National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT))
The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) was founded in 1995 after the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. MIPT is a non-profit organization focused on the prevention of terrorism in the United States, currently funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Knowledge Base, according to their site, “covers the history, affiliations, locations, and tactics of terrorist groups operating across the world, with over 35 years of terrorism incident data and hundreds of group and leader profiles and trials. TKB also features interactive maps, statistical summaries, and analytical tools that can create custom graphs and tables.” Terrorism incident data covers 1968-1997 for non-U.S. incidents, and the entire world from 1997 to the present. The site also houses the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) from the National Counterterrorism Center, a separate and more extensive accounting of terrorist incidents from 2004 to March 2005 (as of January 2006).

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), U.S. Department of Justice)
The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) was established in 1978 and holds over 700 data collections relating to criminal justice. Most of the data is freely available for download through ICPSR, but users must agree to abide by Federal laws and scientific standards regarding human subject use. A selection of NACJD datasets is available for online data analysis as well. There are also partially-restricted and completely-restricted data available through NACJD. The site carries data resource guides on thirteen justice-related topics.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service (U.S. Department of Justice and Executive Office of the President)
The NCJRS offers publications and statistics on justice and substance abuse issues. Many reports on the site have companion data in Excel spreadsheets, and/or links to Bureau of Justice Statistics raw data at ICPSR. The site also offers a free e-mail reference service; an abstracts database of over 170,000 criminal justice publications; and a "virtual library" of over 7000 full-text criminal justice publications.

National Data Analysis System (NDAS) (Child Welfare League of America)
The National Data Analysis System provides data and information about child welfare in order to provide an information-based grounding for children’s programs and policies in the US. Data available from the site include child abuse and neglect, adoption and foster care, child health, juvenile justice, and child welfare administration. Users can create their own tables and graphs for a single state or groups of states. Tables may be downloaded as ASCII files to be read in Excel. Many topics only cover the latest year’s data, generally two years behind due to reporting cycles. However, some topics have data over time going back a decade or more. The site also provides fact sheets and data trends reports for the fifty states plus the District of Columbia.

National Women’s Health Indicators Database (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office on Women’s Health)
“NWHID contains extensive health data from the year 2000 for the entire United States, and it will updated on a yearly basis. National, regional, state and county data are available and the data can be stratified by gender, race/ethnicity, and age concurrently. The database includes statistics on: Demographics, Mortality, Access to care, Infections and chronic disease, Reproductive health, Maternal health, Mental health, Prevention, and Violence and Abuse. Access is free, and users can make their own tables and graphs out of any data in the database. The database also incorporates a mapping capability using ArcView GIS. Age-adjusted data and 3-year averages are included for many of the health indicators.”

OECD Factbook (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD))

The OECD Factbook is the organization's best-selling title, an annual global overview focusing on economic, social and environmental indicators for OECD member countries and several additional partners (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, Indonesia, China, South Africa, Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia.) Each year a special topic is chosen for a supplemental chapter; in 2009 the special topic is inequality.

The Factbook is available through the UW-Madison SourceOECD subscription, but also in various formats for non-subscribers, including PDF with Excel graphs. OECD Factbook also provides Trendalyzer dynamic visualisation software to help users identify long-term trends and comparisons between countries, and the Flash-based OECD Factbook eXplorer which combines maps and graphs with stories to let users examine time developments and interrelations between indicators.

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (U.S. Department of Justice)
This Web site is designed to provide information and resources on both general areas of interest about juvenile justice and delinquency including conferences, funding opportunities, and new publications and the comprehensive strategy as a framework for communities to combat youth crime. Click on "Facts and Figures" for statistics on juvenile justice, delinquency prevention, and violence and victimization. It also provides data sets for juvenile arrests, court processing, and supplemental homicide statistics.

PolicyMap (The Reinvestment Fund)

PolicyMap is a geographic information system that lets users map, graph, and organize data relevant to neighborhood planning and economic revitalization. The site carries data on demographics, real-estate, crime, income, education, and jobs – over 4,000 indicators. Depending on the data, maps and reports can be focused on areas as small as block groups or census tracts, or as large as states.

The site has many components available with a free registration, and others available to subscribers only. The free data comes from such agencies as the Census, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and other US government agencies. Fee-based, subscriber-only data comes mostly from Claritas, a consumer-data and demographics firm that produces projections and annual small-area estimates. Subscribers can also upload data and create custom mapping regions. (UW-Madison does not subscribe).

The oldest data is from the 2000 Census, while the most current is the 2008 Presidential Contributions by state and ZIP code. A complete list of PolicyMap data can be found at http://www.policymap.com/our-data.html.

School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. Department of Education)
The School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) collects information on school crime and safety from a national sample of school principals in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. The survey was conducted in 1999/2000 and again in 2003/2004, with plans to continue on a biennial schedule. Questionnaires and publications are available online as PDFs; data files may be ordered free of charge on CD-ROM from the U.S. Department of Education’s EdPubs ordering system.

SEARCH -- The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics (The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics)
SEARCH is a nonprofit consortium that exists to help state and local justice agencies exchange information with one another or with the federal government. The site provides links to special projects including the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Law Enforcement IT, Integrated Justice, Drug Courts, and Internet Crimes Against Children. A text-only version of the site is available.

Sociometrics Corporation (Sociometrics Corp)
The Sociometrics Corporation is a commercial entity that provides data & documentation in six major areas: sexuality, health & adolescence; family; social research on aging; drug abuse; AIDS/STD; and disability. Studies can be searched or browsed; The datasets may be ordered for a fee, or may be available through other DISC subscriptions.

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Hosted by the State University of New York at Albany, the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics compiles data from over 100 sources and presents it in searchable PDF documents, with tables as spreadsheet files. The site is organized into six sections: System Characteristics, Public Opinion, Offenses Known, Arrests, Judicial Processing, and Corrections.

State Corrections Statistics (National Institute of Corrections)
This quick-reference site combines data from the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the American Jail Association, the American Correctional Association, and state government websites. One year’s worth of information is displayed for each state, in an HTML table that summarizes violent crime, property crime, corrections population and incarceration rate, community corrections and cost per inmate. Each figure is compared with national average, highest state and lowest state. Bar graphs at the side of the page for each item show the selected state in context with the other 49 states; running a mouse over the bars displays the comparison for each state.

State of the Cities Data System (SOCDS) at HUDuser (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development)
The SOCDS offers an interactive interface providing data on metropolitan areas, central cities and suburbs on the following subjects:

• demographic and economic data from the 1970 through 2000 U.S. censuses
• current employment statistics from the BLS’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• jobs, business establishments, and average pay from County Business Patterns data
• crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation
• building permit data from U.S. Census Bureau
• urban public finance data from the Census of Governments

State Politics and Policy Quarterly – Data Resource (State Politics and Policy Quarterly)
The SPPQ Data Resource compiles 50 variables from various sources, for the United States by state, covering the following areas: population and vital statistics; politics; education; crime; and business & economy. Most variables are annual figures, and some go back as far as 1975. Download the entire set or a single subject area, in Excel format. A codebook in Word is also available for download.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) (Syracuse University)
The TRAC site, at Syracuse University, bills itself as "your source for comprehensive, independent, and nonpartisan information on federal enforcement, staffing, and spending." The site features maps, graphs, and many pages of HTML tables and other supporting material. Sections of the TRAC web site describe the enforcement activities and staffing patterns of the FBI, the IRS, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Customs Service. A new (2006) project focusing on immigration has been added to the site at http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/. Data extracts for download are available through the subscription area of the site called TRACFED; UW-Madison does not subscribe.

TransMONEE: Database of Socio-Economic Indicators for CEE/CIS Countries (United Nations Children's Fund and Innocenti Research Center)
TransMONEE contains over 150 economic and social indicators divided into ten different topics (population, natality, child and maternal mortality, life expectancy and adult mortality, family formation, health, education, child protection, crime indicators, and economic indicators) for 27 transition countries in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Annual time series data is available as far back as 1989. The TransMONEE data and country profiles are both available in Excel format.

U.S. Bomb Data Center (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms)
The mission of the U.S. Bomb Data Center is to "provide arson and explosives statistics utilizing all available sources of information to ATF, other Federal, State & Local law enforcement and fire service agencies and the public." The data in this repository come from several sources, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the United States Fire Administration. Data access in most cases is reserved for law enforcement and fire service agencies, though a few tables and PowerPoint presentations can be found on the site.

U.S. Courts – Statistical Reports (U.S. Federal Judiciary)
This site from the U.S. Federal Judiciary contains reports on caseloads for both the courts of appeals and district courts; bankruptcy filings; and wiretaps. Recent bankruptcy filing reports are available in Excel, while bankruptcy filing reports from the 1980s until 2000 are in PDF. The link for Federal Court Management Statistics lets the user select a year and a jurisdiction to generate Excel files of caseload information – the earliest report, 1997, carries figures back to 1992. Wiretap information and other caseload reports are presented in PDF only.

Uniform Crime Reports (University of Virginia Social Sciences Data Center)
This collection, from ICPSR 1990-2001 datasets, consists of four county-level data files. The first three provide arrests for Part I offenses (murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, and arson) and for Part II offenses (forgery, fraud, embezzlement, vandalism, weapons violations, sex offenses, drug and alcohol abuse violations, gambling, vagrancy, curfew violations, and runaways). The fourth file provides reported offenses (as opposed to arrests) for Part I crimes only. A customized web form performs data extraction. Online plain text codebooks may be viewed as well.

United Nations Surveys of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network -- UNCJIN)
United Nations World Crime Surveys of Crime Trends and Criminal Justice data sets are available from this site. Data format varies by survey wave: ASCII, Excel, Lotus 123, and/or SPSS.

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