Library Guides: Understanding the Illinois Criminal Justice System: Home

QUICK LINKS

ProQuest One Business This link opens in a new window
Replaces ABI/Inform Complete.
Contains business-focused content from a variety of sources including newspapers, dissertations, ebooks, video, business cases, industry reports and more.
Articles Plus This link opens in a new window
Articles Plus allows simultaneous searching of a broad range of articles, books, book reviews, and other collections, including:
Hundreds of the Librarys article databases
Over 40,000 journals and periodicals
The University of Chicago Library catalog
Digitized collections of documents and images from many organizations

Criminal Justice Assessment Toolkit (United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime)
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A toolkit for people looking at effectiveness of different aspects of the criminal justice system (I found the section on the courts very helpful in terms of choosing what issues to address within this area).
-E. Lyon
Electronic Database for Social Service & Social Work Topics (University of Chicago)
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Created by the Social Service Administration Library of the University of Chicago. Click on a topic to get a prioritized list of databases for a given topic. Topics include: Addiction/Substance Abuse, Crime/Criminals/Corrections/Criminology, Public Policy, Race Relations/Racial Diversity/Minorities, Social Policy, Statistics related to social work and social service topics

Criminal Justice Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Description (from Database Finder): Covers major journals and books in criminology, reports from governmental and non-governmental agencies. Topics include crime trends, prevention projects, corrections, juvenile delinquency, police, courts, offenders, victims, and sentencing.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Provides access to global news and business information, including local newspapers, same-day newswires, company reports, and media programs. Content is available in many different languages, including Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Russian. Stock data and indices are available for 5 years.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Searchable full text, page images, and PDF versions of law journal articles from the first issue to the present, plus the Federal Register from 1936 to 1980, U.S. Supreme Court opinions from 1754 to the present, and U.S. treaties from 1776 to the present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A database of back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. All issues of each journal are included in full-text except for the most recent 2-to-5 years.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Formerly LexisNexis Academic
A full-text news and information service that provides access to newspapers, magazines, news wires, news transcripts, business, and legal information. Dates of coverage vary by title.

FindLaw for Legal Professionals
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A useful source is the FindLaw section which deals with Illinois state law. I've used it before in other classes, and I think it makes a nice complement to the THOMAS search engine which is already included in the guides - it focuses on existing statutes organized by code, as opposed to arranging them chronologically and fragmenting them into individual bills, and in my experience it's a lot easier to use than LexisNexis. It could be really useful in researching the current regulations and institutional structures of the Illinois criminal justice system. T. Chapman
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
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The archive contains data from over 2,600 curated studies or statistical data series, including the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database
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Presents the National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database, which contains summaries of criminal justice publications. Includes United States federal, state, and local government reports, books, research reports, articles, and unpublished research. Provides searching tips for users.

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is an interdisciplinary, bibliographic database that indexes the contents of more than 29,000 journals in the physical sciences, engineering, earth and environmental sciences, life and health sciences, social sciences, psychology, business, and management.

Scopus also features cited references and can be searched for articles that cite a specific article.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Provides access to research in sociology and related disciplines. Includes citations since 1963 (and abstracts since 1974) for articles in over 1,500 journals.
University of Chicago Library Catalog This link opens in a new window
Find items in all campus libraries, including books, periodicals, sound recordings, videos, DVDs and more.

Uniform Crime Reports (FBI)
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The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics. Today, several annual statistical publications, such as the comprehensive Crime in the United States, are produced from data provided by nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.

WorldCat (OCLC) This link opens in a new window
WorldCat is a database that allows researchers to search the combined catalogs of hundreds of libraries around the world. It contains more than 52 million records for books, journals, audiovisual materials and more. This source can help researchers find items, verify citations, and identify which libraries hold a particular title.

RELATED LIBGUIDES

Reference Sources: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Bibliographies

Legal Organizations

American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section
Center for Public Integrity: Harmful Error Project (Prosecutorial Misconduct)
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
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The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) encourages, at all levels of federal, state and local government, a rational and humane criminal justice policy for America -- one that promotes fairness for all; due process for even the least among us who may be accused of wrongdoing; compassion for witnesses and victims of crime; and just punishment for the guilty. Includes access to its journal THE CHAMPION.

Understanding the Illinois Criminal Justice System

A wide range of governmental and non-governmental organizations and interests is involved in the administration of justice in Illinois. Federal, state, county, and city actors are involved in what may or may not amount to a “system.” Millions of dollars are spent in the apprehension, prosecution, incarceration, and post-incarceration monitoring of offenders. Millions more have been spent on advocacy and research attempting to improve the system.

This RFP seeks research assistance in

(a) understanding the policy landscape of this domain through a review of actors, policy and practice,

(b) identifying policy changes that could be implemented most quickly and at least cost to make the greatest improvements, and

The findings will be used to assist the client in funding programs in the area of criminal justice in the coming years.

CHICAGO-AREA ACADEMIC INSTITUTES, CENTERS, PROJECTS

Center for Advocacy & Dispute Resolution (John Marshall Law School)
Children and Family Justice Center (Northwestern University Law School)
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The Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC) is a comprehensive children's law center where law students, under the supervision of attorneys and clinical professors, represent young people on matters of delinquency and crime, family violence, school discipline, health and disability, and immigration and asylum. We collaborate with communities and child welfare, educational, mental health and juvenile justice systems to develop fair and effective policies and solutions for reform.
Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy (Roosevelt University)
Institute for Metropolitan Affairs (Roosevelt University)
Institute for Policy Research (Northwestern University)
Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation (Roosevelt University)
Medill Justice Project (Northwestern University)
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The Medill Innocence Project supports the research of Northwestern University journalism classes on investigative reporting in which students look into cases that potentially involve miscarriages of justice, with priority given to murder cases and with a commitment to transparency and publication.

Committed to seeking the truth, our staff screens potential cases of innocence and responds to calls for help from prisoners. Students enrolled in the Medill Innocence Project class investigate cases over a 10-week period and publish their findings on this site.