Skip to Main Content
Primary Sources
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 This link opens in a new window
Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 is an archive comprising more than 2 million pages. It contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, some of the printed matter very scarce. The archive unites a number of geographic areas, reflecting the widespread impact of the changes in crime and its policing during the long nineteenth century. The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes.
African American Police League Records, 1961–1988 (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Contains annual and general reports, court files, fundraising items, historical information, minutes, correspondence, clippings, topical files, newsletters, police brutality files, and publications and flyers relative to the ongoing work of the African American Police League (AAPL) and its education and action arm, the League to Improve the Community (LIC). The collection also contains items on numerous law enforcement and civil rights organizations across the country; materials on the suspension of AAPL executive director Renault Robinson from the Chicago Police Department and related lawsuits; and materials pertaining to the National Black Police Association (NBPA).
History of Capital Punishment This link opens in a new window
This online resource includes both database and PDF versions of the Eugene G. Wanger and Marilyn M. Wanger Death Penalty Collection: A Descriptive Bibliography, which represents more than 50 years of expert and extensive research on this subject. Also included are hundreds of additional related publications, such as hearings, trials, periodicals, and more.
Pinkerton's National Detective Agency Records (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
During its 150-year history, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, the oldest company of private investigators in the United States–founded in the 1850s–pursued some of the nation’s most notorious criminals. This collection, digitized from the Library of Congress holdings, includes files on some of the Pinkerton’s most well known cases for research in criminology, sociology, the history of law enforcement and labor relations.
