By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D
According to biographer Beverly Gage, J. Edgar Hoover never wanted his FBI to do traditional law enforcement. He had philosophical problems with federal involvement in local affairs and wanted his agents, recruited from accountants and lawyers, to stick with non-violent federal crimes. Realizing an itch to be science-oriented and maintaining important relationships with local and state law enforcement agencies, Hoover developed the famed FBI lab, developed a national fingerprint identification system, and gathered crime statistics that are now known as the Uniform Crime Report (UCR).
The FBI and other government enforcement agencies grew in scope and authority, but the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued to engage in research and statistics. Lawmakers, policymakers, and street cops can all benefit from the information gathered and distributed through the many agencies of the DOJ and those law enforcement entities now gathered under the umbrella of Homeland Security.
Need statistics? In addition to the often-noted UCR, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has a library of research data. Recent releases include a report on jails in Indian country, females in law enforcement, prison recidivism rates, and justice expenditures. The BJS archives offer thousands of pages of reports accessible by a portal search of their site.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will tell the reader all they need to know about the number and types of bombs and bomb threats. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) tracks drug labs, trends in the use and abuse of legal and illegal substances, and prevention options among many others. The DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) presents statistics on complaints against immigration judges, and asylum requests. At the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website, a search of their information library will yield facts, figures, and statistics (always interesting to compare across various Presidential eras).
Over at the BJA (Bureau of Justice Assistance), criminal justice researchers and planners can explore manuals on crime reduction strategies, support for mental health programming, investigating cold cases, and best practices for children visiting imprisoned parents just to name a few of the wide variety of topics available.
Stopping by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), law enforcement agencies and community organizations can find grant funding opportunities as well as over 700 publications on the topic of effective law enforcement and community engagement. Ranging from human trafficking to officer mental health to victims’ rights, the easily searchable database is a wealth of information.
A popular site for researchers (and criminal justice students with term papers to write) is the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) webpage of inmate statistics. There you’ll find that the most frequently occurring age of a federal prisoner is 36, that 57% are white, that 93% are male, that 45% are drug offenders, that 25% percent are sentenced to from 5-10 years, and that there are 160,000 federal inmates.
One of the largest collections is within the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) whose motto is “Strengthen science, advance justice.” With its collection of multi-media resources, in addition to apps and software, investigators can find additional information to enhance their efforts in forensics from child sexual exploitation to missing persons investigations, and detection of drugs in hair samples to analyzing blood spatter.
The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) obviously is dedicated to tending to crime victims. OVC was created in 1988 as justice advocates began a movement to include justice for victims as well as due process justice for offenders. Their library includes a variety of helpful and insightful material as well as a mobile app for victims and service providers.
The name of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is self-explanatory. Recent headline publications from the OJJDP include child homicide rates and programs to reclaim juveniles from restrictive justice practices.
All of this alphabet soup list of information agencies is derived from a single trip to the main DOJ website and is not exhaustive by any means. Other helpful sites are from the Secret Service in their research on school violence and Hoover’s legacy of the FBI’s UCR. Whether it is crimes against women or abuse of animals, there is a government publication waiting for you.
This article originally appeared at the National Police Association.
