Every five to seven years since 1972, the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a comprehensive report that presents data on incarcerated persons in the US. The most recent report, the fifth in the series on correctional populations, has just been released and provides detailed information for 1996, a year in which 3.2 million were on probation, 510,400 were in...
The US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics recently updated this massive database to include selected data through 1996. Lotus spreadsheets (.wk1) are available in 55 subjects covering crimes and arrests, criminal justice, and general demography. The data is "aggregated...from a wide variety of published sources" and presented in this format to facilitate further analysis. Data is...
The FBI has released its annual Crime in the United States report for 1998 (preliminary data discussed in the May 18, 1999 Scout Report for Social Sciences). The report is based on the Bureau's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which compiles data from over 17,000 city, county, and state law enforcement agencies nationwide. The report is offered in seven sections in .pdf format only: Summary...
It has become a truism that we live in an age of information. However, the true scale of the data currently available to the average citizen can still inspire some measure of awe. Such may be the experience when scouting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s crime website, which features a staggering array of crime statistics from around the country. Here readers may examine the statistics...
This new report from the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that violent and property crimes have fallen to their lowest levels since the Crime Victimization Survey was begun in 1973. Violent crime rates in 1997 were 21% lower than in 1993, while property crime fell 22% from the same year and over 50% from 1973. Some analysts have suggested that the large...
This new report from the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that violent and property crimes have again fallen to their lowest rates since the survey began in 1973. The drop in violent crime continues a downward trend that began in 1994, although rape and sexual assault showed no decline from 1997 to 1998. The biggest drop in property crime was motor vehicle...
Last week, the Department of Justice's Bureau of Statistics released its annual report on criminal victimization. "This report presents 1999 criminal victimization levels and rates from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)." Data on victim characteristics, victim-offender relationships, use of weapons, and trends in victimization rates from 1993 to 1999 are also included. According to...
This article from the January edition of the National Institute of Justice Journal summarizes, in eight packed pages, significant data on crime and punishment in America over the course of the last century, with emphasis on the last few decades. Among other things, the report examines the recent decline in property crimes comparing figures to other countries, discusses the apparent drop in...
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has recently placed an item of interest online. This item concerns a joint Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and FBI effort to create individual records on each crime reported. "Under NIBRS, law enforcement authorities will provide information to the FBI on each criminal incident in 22 broad categories of offenses that occur in their jurisdiction." As part of an...
Recently released by the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, this report enumerates the more than 3.9 million men and women on probation or parole in the US at the end of 1997. The report lists the total number of parolees and probationers by region and state, scrutinizes the demographic characteristics of this record-breaking population, and compares the results with the...