Criminology and Criminal Justice

Databases and websites for articles, books and statistics on criminal justice

Key Databases

Use these indexes and databases to find articles in both professional and scholarly journals. An article that is not available in full text can be requested by clicking on the Get It For Me button button.

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Provides full text for 3,400 publications, including Criminology and Public Policy, Legal and Criminological Psychology, Journal of Addictions and Offender Counseling, Federal Probation, Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, Crime and Delinquency, and International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.

American Prison Newspapers 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside

Criminal Justice Database (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to articles in nearly 60 criminal justice journals and newsletters and article abstracts for an additional 140 periodicals.
Criminal Justice Abstracts (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive index of scholarship in criminal justice and criminology and related disciplines. Indexes scholarly journals as well as books and reports from government and non-government agencies. Date coverage:1968 - current. Updated quarterly.
Criminology: A Sage Full-text Collection This link opens in a new window
Provides articles from a number of journals on topics in criminology.
Chronicle of Higher Education This link opens in a new window
No. 1 source of news, information, and job opportunities for college and university community. Contains full content of current issue; essays, daily news and advice columns; archived issues since 1989 searchable by keyword; discussion forums; salary databases; and data from the Almanac of Higher Education. Register to receive RSS feeds or email newsletters. Updated daily.
data.census.gov (Explore Census Data) This link opens in a new window
Primary search tool to browse and access U.S. census data and build custom, downloadable tables, charts, reports, maps and data visualizations. Includes detailed data on population, housing, economics, and geographies from the Decennial Census, American Community Survey, Economic Census and other surveys.
Topics and geographies are easy to search using the single search bar, or access more detailed data using the filters in the Advanced Search option.
Access data.census.gov tutorials.
FORENSICnetBASE / LawENFORCEMENTnetBASE This link opens in a new window
E-books in the forensic sciences and related disciplines by esteemed criminologists and forensic practitioners. Topics include crisis management and negotiation methods, arson and homicide investigation, expert witnessing, and forensic pathology.
Hein Online: Civil Rights and Social Justice This link opens in a new window
Containing publications from the Commission on Civil Rights, legislative histories on landmark legislation, briefs from relevant U.S. Supreme Court cases, and more, this database covers civil rights in the United States as their legal protections and definitions are expanded to cover more and more Americans.
Hein Online: Gun Regulation and Legislation in America This link opens in a new window
This timely database brings together essential periodicals, compiled legislative histories, CRS reports, Congressional hearings, United States Supreme Court briefs, monographs, and other related materials on the difficult and controversial topic of regulating firearms in the United States. It also includes an extensive bibliography and a balanced selection of external resources to further research this subject.
Hein Online: LGBTQ+ Rights This link opens in a new window
Covers the gay rights movement in America, showing the civil rights codified into law in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics are divided into subcategories including marriage and family, employment discrimination, military service, AIDS and health care, public spaces and accommodations, and historical attitudes and analysis. Includes primary sources and scholarly articles, subject-coded court cases, books, pamphlets, reports, as well as an interactive timeline.
Hein Online: Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This link opens in a new window
Includes all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world, as well as materials on free African-Americans in the colonies and the U.S. before 1870. Search the entire database or browse by slavery statutes (state and federal), judicial cases, scholarly articles, e-books, bibliography, and external links.

Justice and Public Safety: Legislative Budget Board
Includes "Adult and Juvenile Correctional Populations: Monthly Report" and "Statewide Criminal and Juvenile Justice Recidivism and Revocation Rates"

Legal Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Full text coverage of the discipline of law and legal topics in law journals, scholarly journals, magazines, and trade publications. 1887-current
NAACP Papers (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Covers 1909-1972. Digitized primary source material from the NAACP. Content is organized into six modules documenting the NAACP's work on behalf of civil rights, including the fight for voting rights and campaigns against segregated education, discrimination and segregation in public places, residential discrimination, discrimination in the workplace and the armed forces, and the campaign against lynching, among others. Also included are the NAACP’s national organizational records and Legal Department files. Use Advanced Search for keyword searching or use the timeline to find records of significant events.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) This link opens in a new window
A free web database that indexes 160,000 journal articles, about 7,000 full text. There are mainly government publications, dating from 1966 to the present.
Nexis Uni (LexisNexis) This link opens in a new window
Extensive coverage of news, legal and business sources. Contains full text U.S. and foreign newspapers, broadcast transcripts, newswires; company, industry and financial information including Company Dossier, and legal sources for U.S. Federal and State case law, statutes, regulations and law reviews. Create a free profile (optional) to save searches and set up alerts. Updated daily. Coverage: 1975-current.

Oxford Bibliographies Online: Criminology
Contains recommendations for scholarship at all levels, whether encyclopedias and textbooks or journal articles and primary sources. Bibliographic essays and annotated citations on each topic. Peer-reviewed, selective, rather than exhaustive content chosen by experts.

Oxford Handbooks Online This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to subject based handbooks in a variety of disciplines. Each handbook offers a critical survey of the current state of scholarship in a particular field of study. Individual chapters review key issues and major debates, providing an in-depth overview of the field as well as a selected bibliography for further reading.
Praeger Security International Online This link opens in a new window
Provides access to a collection of materials related to security and terrorism, covering topics such as immigration and border control, disaster response, transportation security, counterinsurgency, weapons of mass destruction, and energy and security. Includes over 600 e-books published by Praeger Security International, commentaries by scholars and field experts, and over 1,000 primary documents.
ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Provides journal and newspaper articles across all subject areas.
PsycINFO (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Covers professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines. Contains over two million citations and summaries of articles from journals, books, book chapters, dissertations, and technical reports. Some full-text.
Sage Research Methods Online This link opens in a new window
Contains content on research methods from books, journals and reference sources; research methods videos; tutorials; case studies showing how research methods are applied; and practice datasets from actual research. Researchers can explore methods concepts to help them design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct their research, and write up their findings. Since SRMO focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and more. Includes entire "Little Green Book" (quantitative research) and "Little Blue Book" (qualitative research) series.
Social Services Abstracts (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Focuses on sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavior sciences.
Sociological Abstracts (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Focuses on sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences, indexing and abstracting thousands of titles including journals, conference papers, books, and dissertations.
Texas Legal Forms Library (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Texas legal forms in Word format including description on use for each form. Searchable or browsable by category, including contracts, wills, landlord tenant, real estate, small business, and taxes. Updated continuously.
USA.gov This link opens in a new window
USA.gov is the U.S. government's official web portal to all federal, state, and local government web resources and services, as well as those of cross-government agencies and tribal governments. Provides access to over 100,000 government websites. Search the official Spanish language web portal of the U.S. Government at USAGov en español . For similar resources, see also govinfo and GPO Monthly Catalog.

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) Reports & Testimonies
An independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the "congressional watchdog." GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.

Search Library QuickSearch

Use Library Quick Search to search for books, articles, videos across many databases at once.

Search Google Scholar

Use Google Scholar to search for scholarly papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports from many disciplines. Results come from a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, and universities, as well as scholarly articles from the Web. Google Scholar provides direct linking to full text content in many UTSA Libraries' subscription databases.

Sample Keyword Searches

Find Items By	Search Examples
advanced keyword	"criminal behavior" and biology "criminal behavior" and (city or cities or urban) "restorative justice" and "domestic violence" "incarcerated parents"
author (use advanced search)	Walens Susann
LC Subject Heading	Criminal Law Prison Administration United States
book or journal title	Punishment & Society Justice Quarterly Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology