Related Guides
Selected Data, Statistical Sources, Mapping & Public Opinion
For additional sources of crime data and statistics, see the Criminal Justice Data & Statistics research guide.
- Mass Shooter Database (The Violence Project) Contains extensive details about public mass shootings in the US and their perpetrators, weapons, and victims, with a goal of “finding pathways to prevention.” The database, funded by a National Institute of Justice grant, covers 170+ shootings between 1966 and early 2020.
- Washington Post Police Shootings Database In 2015, The Washington Post began to log every fatal shooting by an on-duty police officer in the United States.
- The Stanford Open Policing Project n a typical day in the United States, police officers make more than 50,000 traffic stops. Our team is gathering, analyzing, and releasing records from millions of traffic stops by law enforcement agencies across the country. Our goal is to help researchers, journalists, and policymakers investigate and improve interactions between police and the public.
- United States Sentencing Commission, Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics The tables and figures available on the ISB are based on the tables and figures available in the Commission's printed Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics (Sourcebook). The Sourcebook displays federal sentencing data from the Commission's datafiles. As part of its ongoing mission, the Commission provides Congress, the Judiciary, the Executive branch, and the general public with data extracted and analyzed from sentencing documents submitted by courts to the Commission.
- FBI: Crime Data Explorer (CDE) The FBI's Crime Data Explorer (CDE) aims to provide transparency, create easier access, and expand awareness of criminal, and noncriminal, law enforcement data sharing; improve accountability for law enforcement; and provide a foundation to help shape public policy with the result of a safer nation. Use the CDE to discover available data through visualizations, download data in .csv format, and other large data files.
- Policing for Profit (Institute for Justice) Most states and the federal government have laws allowing police and prosecutors to seize and permanently keep Americans’ cash, cars, homes and other property suspected of being involved in a crime—without regard to the owners’ guilt or innocence. This is civil forfeiture, and it is rampant nationwide, with local, state and federal agencies using it to collectively forfeit billions of dollars each year. Many of these billions go directly to law enforcement, including the same
- FBI: Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) The UCR Program's primary objective is to generate reliable information for use in law enforcement administration, operation, and management; over the years, however, the data have become one of the country’s leading social indicators. The program has been the starting place for law enforcement executives, students of criminal justice, researchers, members of the media, and the public at large seeking information on crime in the nation.
- Crime in the United States An annual publication for more than eight decades, this report contains a compilation of the volume and rate of violent and property crime offenses for the nation and by state. Individual law enforcement agency data are also provided for those contributors supplying 12 months complete offense data. In addition, this report also includes arrest, clearance, trends, and law enforcement employee data. Also available to use with Crime in the United States is the online UCR Data Tool to research crime statistics for the nation, by state, and by individual law enforcement agency.
- BJS: National Crime Victimization Survey The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is the nation's primary source of information on criminal victimization. Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 interviews on criminal victimization, involving 160,000 unique persons in about 95,000 households.
- Race And Ethnicity Of Violent Crime Offenders And Arrestees, 2018 This report compares the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data on incidents of nonfatal violent crime to data from BJS's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to determine if arrest differences by race and ethnicity can be attributed to differences in criminal involvement. It examines offenders' characteristics as reported by victims in the NCVS and provides information on racial and ethnic disparities beyond an arrestee and population-based comparison.
- Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (University of Albany) The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics brings together data about all aspects of criminal justice in the United States presented in over 600 tables from more than 100 sources. Selected data to 2013.
- Bureau of Justice Statistics The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is the United States' primary source for criminal justice statistics
- ResearchDataGov ResearchDataGov is a web portal for discovering and requesting access to restricted microdata from 16 federal statistical agencies
- Court Statistics Project The Court Statistics Project (CSP) — a joint project of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) — publishes caseload data from the courts of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. These data are provided by the offices of the state court administrator in those jurisdictions. The data reported here conform to the definitions and case counting rules in the State Court Guide to Statistical Reporting (Guide). States publish their own data that may be more extensive, although not directly comparable to other states for a variety of reasons, including differences in court structure, case definitions and counting practices, court rules, statutes, or terminology.
- National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) archives and disseminates data on crime and justice for secondary analysis. The archive contains data from over 2,600 curated studies or statistical data series. NACJD is home to several large-scale and well known datasets, including the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and the Project on Human Development in Chicago
- Campus Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool The Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool is brought to you by the Office of Postsecondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education. This analysis cutting tool was designed to provide rapid customized reports for public inquiries relating to campus crime and fire data.
- Crime in Boston (Boston Public Library) Crime has been part of the history of Boston almost since the beginning. This guide will give brief overview of some of the more notable crimes and criminals in Boston's past and offer suggestions for further research.
- Adults in Correctional Facilities from Decennial Census, 2000-2020 (The Marshall Project) Downloadable dataset of the number of adults in correctional facilities per county from the 2000, 2010 and 2020 Decennial Census.
- Federal Bureau of Prisons Maintains statistics on inmates, population, and staff.
- Innocence Database, Death Penalty Information Center For Inclusion on DPIC's Innocence List: Defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either- a. Been acquitted of all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row, or b. Had all charges related to the crime that placed them on death row dismissed by the prosecution or the courts, or c. Been granted a complete pardon based on evidence of innocence.
- The National Registry of Exonerations The Registry collects, analyzes and disseminates information about all known exonerations of innocent criminal defendants in the United States, from 1989 to the present. We publish their stories and we provide accessible, searchable online statistical data about their cases. We also conduct empirical studies of the process of exoneration and of factors that lead to the underlying wrongful convictions.
- World Prison Brief Provides information about prison systems throughout the world. It enables more evidence-based discussion of ways to improve prison systems in accordance with international human rights standards. In each country page information is provided on prison populations and prison population rates per 100,000 of the national population, on the use of imprisonment for women and juveniles, on the extent of pre-trial imprisonment and on prison overcrowding, as well as a record of the national ministries
- Sunlight Foundation Hall of Justice Hall of Justice is a Sunlight Foundation Project working with criminal justice data. The project is no longer maintained, but you can find the archived underlying data set here.
- World Prison Brief: International Imprisonments Highest to Lowest World Prison Brief is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is hosted by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London.
Public Opinion
- Roper Center Public Opinion Archives This link opens in a new window The Roper Center is a public opinion archive that preserves the data from polls conducted by many leading survey organizations. Most of the data are from the United States, but over 50 nations are represented. The iPOLL databank offers access to nearly half a million survey questions and answers asked in the U.S. by more than 150 survey organizations. Direct links are given to study documentation and datasets.
Mapping/Visualization
- The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database The Police Crime Database includes summary information on 10,287 criminal arrest cases from the years 2005-2014 involving 8,495 individual nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers, each of whom were charged with one or more crimes.
- Community Crime Mapping LexisNexis’s public crime map, Community Crime Map, connects law enforcement with the community to reduce crime and improve public safety. Crime mapping helps the public get a better idea of the crime activity in their area so they can make more informed decisions about how to stay safe.
