Investigator(s): United Nations Office at Vienna, R.W. Burnham, Helen Burnham, Bruce DiCristina, and Graeme Newman The United Nations Surveys of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (formerly known as the United Nations World Crime Surveys) series was begun in 1978 and is comprised of five quinquennial surveys covering the years 1970-1975, 1975-1980, 1980-1986, 1986-1990, and 1990-1994. The project was supported by the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, and conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention Branch, United Nations Office in Vienna. Data gathered on crime prevention and criminal justice among member nations provide information for policy development and program planning. The main objectives of the survey include: to conduct a more focused inquiry into the incidence of crime worldwide, to improve knowledge about the incidence of reported crime in the global development perspective and also international understanding of effective ways to counteract crime, to improve the dissemination globally of the information collected, to facilitate an overview of trends and interrelationships among various parts of the criminal justice system so as to promote informed decision-making in its administration, nationally and cross-nationally, and to serve as an instrument for strengthening cooperation among member states by putting the review and analysis of national crime-related data in a broader context. The surveys also provide a valuable source of charting trends in crime and criminal justice over two decades.

Investigator(s): Federal Bureau of Investigation Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as periodic nationwide assessments of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. With the 1977 data, the title was expanded to Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data. Each year, participating law enforcement agencies contribute reports to the FBI either directly or through their state reporting programs. ICPSR archives the UCR data as five separate components: (1) summary data, (2) county-level data, (3) incident-level data (National Incident-Based Reporting System [NIBRS]), (4) hate crime data, and (5) various, mostly nonrecurring, data collections. Summary data are reported in four types of files: (a) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (b) Property Stolen and Recovered, (c) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (d) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data (Law Enforcement Officers Killed or Assaulted). The county-level data provide counts of arrests and offenses aggregated to the county level. County populations are also reported. In the late 1970s, new ways to look at crime were studied. The UCR program was subsequently expanded to capture incident-level data with the implementation of the National Incident-Based Reporting System. The NIBRS data focus on various aspects of a crime incident. The gathering of hate crime data by the UCR program was begun in 1990. Hate crimes are defined as crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. In September 1994, disabilities, both physical and mental, were added to the list. The fifth component of ICPSR's UCR holdings is comprised of various collections, many of which are nonrecurring and prepared by individual researchers. These collections go beyond the scope of the standard UCR collections provided by the FBI, either by including data for a range of years or by focusing on other aspects of analysis. NACJD has produced resource guides on UCR and on NIBRS data.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Series, previously called the National Crime Surveys (NCS), has been collecting data on personal and household victimization through an ongoing survey of a nationally-representative sample of residential addresses since 1973. The NCVS was designed with four primary objectives: (1) to develop detailed information about the victims and consequences of crime, (2) to estimate the number and types of crimes not reported to the police, (3) to provide uniform measures of selected types of crimes, and (4) to permit comparisons over time and types of areas. The survey categorizes crimes as "personal" or "property." Personal crimes include rape and sexual attack, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and purse-snatching/pocket-picking, while property crimes include burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism. Each respondent is asked a series of screen questions designed to determine whether she or he was victimized during the six-month period preceding the first day of the month of the interview. A "household respondent" is also asked to report on crimes against the household as a whole (e.g., burglary, motor vehicle theft). The data include type of crime, month, time, and location of the crime, relationship between victim and offender, characteristics of the offender, self-protective actions taken by the victim during the incident and results of those actions, consequences of the victimization, type of property lost, whether the crime was reported to police and reasons for reporting or not reporting, and offender use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. Basic demographic information such as age, race, gender, and income is also collected, to enable analysis of crime by various subpopulations. This version of the NCVS, referred to as the collection year, contains records from interviews conducted in the 12 months of the given year.

In 2023, Singapore had the highest criminal justice index score across the Asia-Pacific region, with 0.77 points out of one. In contrast, Afghanistan and Myanmar had the lowest criminal justice index scores in the Asia-Pacific region, scoring 0.25 points each in 2023.

The data contain records of charges filed against defendants whose cases were filed by United States attorneys in United States district court during fiscal year 2005. The data are charge-level records, and more than one charge may be filed against a single defendant. The data were constructed from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) Central Charge file. The charge-level data may be linked to defendant-level data (extracted from the EOUSA Central System file) through the CS_SEQ variable, and it should be noted that some defendants may not have any charges other than the lead charge appearing on the defendant-level record. The Central Charge and Central System data contain variables from the original EOUSA files as well as additional analysis variables, or "SAF" variables, that denote subsets of the data. These SAF variables are related to statistics reported in the Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics. Variables containing identifying information (e.g., name, Social Security Number) were replaced with blanks, and the day portions of date fields were also sanitized in order to protect the identities of individuals. These data are part of a series designed by the Urban Institute (Washington, DC) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Data and documentation were prepared by the Urban Institute.

In 2024, India's index for criminal justice, one of the factors in the rule of law index was 0.38. According to the source, this measures if criminal processes are effective, from investigations to adjudication timeliness, reducing criminal behavior are impartial, free of corruption, and follow due process of the law and rights of the accused. That year, India's ranking in the Rule of Law index stood at 79 out of 142 countries, a significant increase compared to 2015.

In 2024, the Philippines had a criminal justice index score of 0.31 out of one. Among the different factors, the absence of corruption had the highest score of 0.45 out of one. On the other hand, effective correctional system had a score of 0.21 out of one. Overall, the country ranked 13th out of the 15 countries in the Asia Pacific region in terms of criminal justice.

In 2023, murder and manslaughter charges had the highest crime clearance rate in the United States, with 57.8 percent of all cases being cleared by arrest or so-called exceptional means. Motor vehicle theft cases had the lowest crime clearance rate, at 8.2 percent. What is crime clearance? Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest, which means that at least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over to the court for prosecution. The second way a case can be closed is through what is called exceptional means, where law enforcement must have either identified the offender, gathered enough evidence to arrest, charge, and prosecute someone, identified the offender’s exact location, or come up against a circumstance outside the control of law enforcement that keeps them from arresting and prosecuting the offender. Crime in the United States Despite what many people may believe, crime in the United States has been on the decline. Particularly in regard to violent crime, the violent crime rate has almost halved since 1990, meaning that the U.S. is safer than it was almost 30 years ago. However, due to the FBI's recent transition to a new crime reporting system in which law enforcement agencies voluntarily report crime data, it is possible that figures do not accurately reflect the total amount of crime in the country.

The National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) data collection began in 1926 in response to a congressional mandate to gather information on persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Originally under the auspices of the U.S. Census Bureau, the collection moved to the Bureau of Prisons in 1950, and then in 1971 to the National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, the precursor to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which was established in 1979. From 1979 to 2013, the Census Bureau was the NPS data collection agent. In 2014, the collection was competitively bid in conjunction with the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP), since many of the respondents for NPS and NCRP are the same. The contract was awarded to Abt Associates, Inc. The NPS is administered to 51 respondents. Before 2001, the District of Columbia was also a respondent, but responsibility for housing the District of Columbia's sentenced prisoners was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and by yearend 2001 the District of Columbia no longer operated a prison system. The NPS provides an enumeration of persons in state and federal prisons and collects data on key characteristics of the nation's prison population. NPS has been adapted over time to keep pace with the changing information needs of the public, researchers, and federal, state, and local governments.

In 2023, Indonesia had a criminal justice index score of 0.4 out of one. Among the different factors, timely and effective adjudication had the highest score of 0.54 out of one. On the other hand, the absence of discrimination had the lowest score of 0.26 out of one. Overall, the country ranked 12th out of 15 countries in the Asia Pacific region in terms of criminal justice.

Criminal Justice is the leading bibliographic database for criminal justice and criminology research. It provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for hundreds of journals covering all related subjects, including forensic sciences, corrections, policing, criminal law and investigation.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the role and impact of forensic science evidence on the criminal justice process. The study utilized a prospective analysis of official record data that followed criminal cases in five jurisdictions (Los Angeles County, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Evansville, Indiana; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and South Bend, Indiana) from the time of police incident report to final criminal disposition. The data were based on a random sample of the population of reported crime incidents between 2003 and 2006, stratified by crime type and jurisdiction. A total of 4,205 cases were sampled including 859 aggravated assaults, 1,263 burglaries, 400 homicides, 602 rapes, and 1,081 robberies. Descriptive and impact data were collected from three sources: police incident and investigation reports, crime lab reports, and prosecutor case files. The data contain a total of 175 variables including site, crime type, forensic variables, criminal offense variables, and crime dispositions variables.

Data tables and figures from the statistical bulletin in excel format. The data contained in these tables are from four sources: Crime Survey for England and Wales, Home Office police recorded crime, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of Justice Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly Update.

Please note: The methodology by which the CSEW calculates its incidents of crime changed in December 2018. Incident numbers and rates published in the Bulletin Tables prior to the year ending September 2018 dataset are not comparable with those currently published.

Recidivism is the act of committing another crime or coming into conflict with the criminal justice system (CJS) again. It is an important measure of the effectiveness of CJS efforts to promote rehabilitation, reintegration, and public safety. This fact sheet is based on publicly available data from the provincial governments of Ontario and Québec, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), Public Safety Canada (PSC), and Statistics Canada. The data were collected from 2001 to 2016.

Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as periodic nationwide assessments of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. Law enforcement agencies contribute reports either directly or through their state reporting programs. Each year, summary data are reported in four types of files: (1) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (2) Property Stolen and Recovered, (3) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (4) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data. The Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest data files include monthly data on the number of Crime Index offenses reported and the number of offenses cleared by arrest or other means. The counts include all reports of Index crimes (excluding arson) received from victims, officers who discovered infractions, or other sources.

In 2023, the violent crime rate in the United States was 363.8 cases per 100,000 of the population. Even though the violent crime rate has been decreasing since 1990, the United States tops the ranking of countries with the most prisoners. In addition, due to the FBI's transition to a new crime reporting system in which law enforcement agencies voluntarily submit crime reports, data may not accurately reflect the total number of crimes committed in recent years. Reported violent crime rate in the United States The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks the rate of reported violent crimes per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants. In the timeline above, rates are shown starting in 1990. The rate of reported violent crime has fallen since a high of 758.20 reported crimes in 1991 to a low of 363.6 reported violent crimes in 2014. In 2023, there were around 1.22 million violent crimes reported to the FBI in the United States. This number can be compared to the total number of property crimes, roughly 6.41 million that year. Of violent crimes in 2023, aggravated assaults were the most common offenses in the United States, while homicide offenses were the least common. Law enforcement officers and crime clearance Though the violent crime rate was down in 2013, the number of law enforcement officers also fell. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of law enforcement officers in the United States rose from around 673,100 to 708,800. However, since 2009, the number of officers fell to a low of 626,900 officers in 2013. The number of law enforcement officers has since grown, reaching 720,652 in 2023. In 2023, the crime clearance rate in the U.S. was highest for murder and non-negligent manslaughter charges, with around 57.8 percent of murders being solved by investigators and a suspect being charged with the crime. Additionally, roughly 46.1 percent of aggravated assaults were cleared in that year. A statistics report on violent crime in the U.S. can be found here.

The reports presents the main trends on the latest 12 months of activity in the criminal justice system (CJS) for England and Wales. For each process a brief description of the function is included with an explanation of some of the main procedures involved.

This file provides data on federal, state, and local governmental expenditures and employment for criminal justice activities in the United States. Information is supplied on police protection, judicial and legal services, and correctional institutions and agencies. Variables describing each of these criminal justice functions include number of, and payroll for, full-time, part-time, and full-time-equivalent employees, current total and general expenditures, capital outlay, and intergovernmental expenditures.