The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics brings together data from more than 100 sources about many aspects of criminal justice in the United States. These data are displayed in over 600 tables. The Sourcebook is supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The tables in Section 1 describe the organization, financial expenditures, and employment of law enforcement, courts, and corrections systems in the United States. Also included is selected legislation relating to driving and alcohol use. Among the contributing sources are the Bureau of Justice Statistics, International City/County Management Association, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Administrative Office of the United States Courts, National Center for State Courts, American Judicature Society, and Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Results from public opinion polls on attitudes of Americans toward criminal justice-related issues are presented in Section 2. Numerous topics are covered including perceptions of problems in schools; ratings of the police and courts; fear of crime; and attitudes toward the death penalty, firearms laws, marijuana legalization, doctor-assisted suicide, and much more. Results of polls conducted by The Gallup Organization; Harris Interactive; the National Opinion Research Center; the Monitoring the Future Project at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan; the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University; and others are included.
Readers should be aware that many factors, especially slight differences in the wording of survey questions, may have significant effects on survey responses. In addition, the margin of error for some survey results, presented in Appendix 5, may vary slightly between surveys. Thus, attention to the exact wording of questions and the appropriate estimate of error should accompany comparisons.
Data in this section describe the nature and extent of criminal activity in the United States. Three different measures of the level of crime are used: victimization surveys, officially recorded data on offenses known to law enforcement agencies, and self-reports of criminal involvement from nationwide surveys. The sources of these data include the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS); the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program; the Monitoring the Future Project at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan; the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; PRIDE Surveys; The Gallup Organization; and others.
Information on persons arrested in the United States is presented in Section 4. These data are from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program; the National Institute of Justice's Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program (ADAM); and other Federal programs and agencies including the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Drug Enforcement Administration, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Concluding the section are tables on seizures by various Federal agencies.
Processing of criminal defendants in the United States, including data from Federal, State, juvenile, and military courts is detailed in Section 5. Among the sources of these data are the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
Section 6 focuses on persons on probation and parole, the number and characteristics of jails and jail inmates, and characteristics of State and Federal prison populations. Also included is information on juveniles in custody, prisoners with HIV, persons serving a military prison sentence, prisoners serving a death sentence, and prisoners executed. The data presented come from a variety of sources including the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Administrative Office of the United States Courts, and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.