UWM Libraries Research and Course Guides: Criminal Justice: Find Scholarly Sources

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Databases for Criminal Justice Research

Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text
Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text contains more than 400,000 records selected from the most important sources within the discipline. Subject areas covered include: criminology; criminal justice; criminal law and procedure; corrections and prisons; police and policing; criminal investigation; forensic sciences and investigation; history of crime; substance abuse and addiction; probation and parole.
Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 7,000 full-text periodicals, including nearly 6,000 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 11,000 journals and a total of more than 11,600 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 journals.
Mass Incarceration and Prison Studies
Mass Incarceration and Prison Studies is organized around a selection of key historical and contemporary events and themes, bringing together archival and reference materials, court cases, first-hand accounts, videos, Supreme Court audio files, research on rehabilitation, training materials and artistic works.
Homeland Security Digital Library
The Homeland Security Digital Library provides quick access to important U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources such as theses and reports from various universities, organizations and local and state agencies. The resources are reviewed and selected by a team of homeland security researchers and organized in a unique homeland security taxonomy.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Virtual Library
The NCJRS Virtual Library has citations and abstracts to federal, state, and local government documents, books, research reports, journal articles, and unpublished research in the field of criminal justice. Some publications are available in full text.
PsycINFO (APA)
PsycINFO is the core database for searching academic, research, and practice literature in psychology. Search the database for citations and summaries of psychology literature published in journals, books and dissertations. Also search here for psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, law and others. It includes over one million citations and summaries. 98% of the materials included here are peer reviewed.
Sociological Abstracts
The Sociological Abstracts database abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. It provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from thousands of serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.

CrimeSolutions - National Institute of Justice
CrimeSolutions is intended to be a central, reliable resource to help practitioners and policymakers understand what works in justice-related programs and practices. Its purpose is to assist in practical decision making and program implementation by gathering information on specific justice-related programs and practices and reviewing the existing evaluation and meta-analysis research against standard criteria.
Research, Statistics, and Evaluation - Office of Justice Programs
As the research, development, and evaluation agency of the Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice is dedicated to improving knowledge and understanding of crime and justice issues through science. NIJ provides objective and independent knowledge and tools to reduce crime and promote justice, particularly at the state and local levels.
National Institute of Corrections Library
The Library, the foundation of the NIC Information Center, was developed to fulfill a legislative mandate for a library/information center to collect, prepare, and disseminate information on corrections as well as maintain special collections for the corrections field and the National Corrections Academy in order to aid the National Institute of Corrections in the development of a more effective and humane correctional system.
Global Policing Database
The Global Policing Database (GPD) is a web-based and searchable database designed to capture all published and unpublished experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of policing interventions conducted since 1950. The Global Policing Database was developed by researchers at The University of Queensland (UQ), and Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia.
Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database - Bowling Green Unviersity
The Police Crime Database includes summary information on 16,563 criminal arrest cases from the years 2005-2018 involving 13,600 individual nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers, each of whom were charged with one or more crimes. The arrested officers were employed by 4,766 state, local, and special law enforcement agencies located in 1,831 counties and independent cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Highlighted Criminal Justice Books from the Collection

Cybercrime Investigators Handbook by Graeme Edwards
ISBN: 9781119596301
Publication Date: 2019-09-13
The Cybercrime Investigators Handbook is the first guide on how to commence an investigation from the location the offence occurred—the scene of the cybercrime—and collect the evidence necessary to locate and prosecute the offender. This valuable contribution to the field teaches readers to locate, lawfully seize, preserve, examine, interpret, and manage the technical evidence that is vital for effective cybercrime investigation.
The Handbook of White-Collar Crime by Melissa L. Rorie; Charles F. Wellford (Series edited by)
ISBN: 9781118774793
Publication Date: 2019-09-13
This handbook re-frames the usual discussion of white-collar crime to focus more on the definitional ambiguity in the white-collar crime term. The only thing white-collar crime researchers agree on is that white-collar offenses are incredibly different from those traditional crimes that are the priority for law enforcement and criminal justice scholars. The Handbook compiles all of the major issues in this area (e.g., offenders, theoretical explanations) in one place, but attends to nuances within those areas by distinguishing between the four main types of crimes falling under the ambiguous white-collar crime phrase (occupational crime, corporate crime, government crimes, and state-corporate crimes).
The Ethics of Undercover Policing by Christopher Nathan
ISBN: 9780429293443
Publication Date: 2022-03-08
Despite the media controversies surrounding high-profile cases of undercover policing, it is not always clear what ethical issues are at stake. Can undercover policing be justified? What are the ethical issues surrounding concealment and infiltration? What larger questions does undercover policing raise about the nature of policing and the legitimacy of coercive state action? In this timely and clear account, Christopher Nathan explores these questions and more. He rejects the view that the consequences of undercover policing always justify the means, instead advancing an argument that through their actions people can make themselves morally liable to some forms of undercover policing. Drawing on several recent, high-profile case studies, Christopher Nathan argues for a new understanding of proportionality in undercover policing that takes account of innocent parties, vulnerable targets, and manipulation into wrongful action. He also defends a central role for the judiciary in the oversight of undercover policing.
Hate Crime in America, 1968-2013: a chronology of offenses, legislation and related events by Michael Newton
ISBN: 1476617465
Publication Date: 2014-09-30
Crimes motivated by prejudice date to the beginning of human history. Despite legislation addressing bias-driven offenses hate crimes continue to plague modern American society. Beginning with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 six days later, this chronology catalogs hate crimes and the relevant statutes and amendments affecting the definition, prosecution and punishment of hate crimes within the U.S. through 2013.
When Abortion Was a Crime: women, medicine, and law in the United States, 1867-1973 by Leslie J. Reagan
ISBN: 9780520387423
Publication Date: 2022-02-22
When Abortion Was a Crime is the must-read book on abortion history. Originally published ahead of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this award-winning study was the first to examine the entire period during which abortion was illegal in the United States, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and ending with that monumental case in 1973. When Abortion Was a Crime is filled with intimate stories and nuanced analysis, demonstrating how abortion was criminalized and policed--and how millions of women sought abortions regardless of the law. With this edition, Leslie J. Reagan provides a new preface that addresses the dangerous and ongoing threats to abortion access across the country, and the precarity of our current moment.
The Limits of Recidivism by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on Evaluating Success Among People Released from Prison; Amanda Grigg (Editor); Richard Rosenfeld (Editor)
ISBN: 9780309276979
Publication Date: 2022-10-01
The Limits of Recidivism: Measuring Success After Prison finds that the current measures of success for individuals released from prison are inadequate. The use of recidivism rates to evaluate post-release success ignores significant research on how and why individuals cease to commit crimes, as well as the important role of structural factors in shaping post-release outcomes. The emphasis on recidivism as the primary metric to evaluate post-release success also ignores progress in other domains essential to the success of individuals returning to communities, including education, health, family, and employment. In addition, the report highlights the unique and essential insights held by those who have experienced incarceration and proposes that the development and implementation of new measures of post-release success would significantly benefit from active engagement with individuals with this lived experience.
Just Policing by Jake Monaghan (Contribution by)
ISBN: 9780197610725
Publication Date: 2023-04-07
Just Policing draws on research in political philosophy and the social sciences to engage a number of current controversies regarding the police. It critiques popular approaches to police abolitionism while defending normative limits on police power. The book offers a defense of police discretion against common objections and evaluates controversial issues in order maintenance, such as the policing of "vice" and homelessness, democratic control over policing, community policing initiatives, police collaborations and alternatives like mental health response teams, and possibilities for structural reform.
Criminal Justice Policy: Origins and effectiveness by Jacinta M. Gau
ISBN: 9780190210939
Publication Date: 2018-01-03
Taking a balanced, reasoned approach, Criminal Justice Policy: Origins and Effectiveness provides an overview of a major policy in each chapter, discussing the type of crime that the policy targets and giving a summary of the empirical evidence on the policy's effectiveness at reducing crime.The text reviews the academic research on policy effectiveness and covers both the theoretical foundation and empirical status of each policy.