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How to find BJS products

Press releases | Publications | Data files & codebooks

The Bureau of Justice Statistics collects and disseminates statistics about crime and justice in the United States. These statistics are presented in a wide variety of reports and the datasets the reports are based on are also available.

To find out the most recent information from BJS, go to What's new at BJS. Much of this information is available in electronic formats that are accessible through the Internet.

In addition, information is presented below about how to order paper versions of our publications and disks and tapes containing BJS data.

Press releases

The most recent press releases from BJS are published on the net at the press release section of the BJS home page.

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BJS publications

Electronic versions of many BJS reports are also available on the net. To find the publication you are interested in you can look under the appropriate criminal justice topic on the BJS home page. If you know the name of the publication, go to the publications list, which is in alphabetical order.

The electronic versions of our publications are presented in two formats: in ASCII without tables and graphics and in portable document format (.pdf) as published with graphics and tables. Many tables from our reports and some additional data are available in the .wk1 format, readable by most spreadsheet software. In many instances, the spreadsheets have been grouped and compressed into files using the .zip format to speed downloads. Except for ASCII documents, our products are in formats that require interpreting applications you need to install on your computer as plug-ins to web browsers or stand-alone only applications. Additional help on locating the free versions of these interpreting applications is available.

To order BJS publications

Contact the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Clearinghouse.

• Order online
  Place your order directly through the Internet at BJS Online Orders.
  
  
• Order by telephone
  In the United States, the Clearinghouse offers toll-free access at 800-851-3420.
  
  
• Order by FAX
  FAX your order to the clearinghouse at 301-519-5212. Include your name, address, and telephone number along with the title and NCJ number of the reports you desire.

In addition to BJS publications, the Clearinghouse provides:

• BJS mailing list information.
• Criminal justice statistics upon request.
• Custom literature searches of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Data Base.
• Referrals to other sources of crime data.
• Data assistance from information specialists at the Clearinghouse.

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Data files and codebooks

The BJS archives data files, documents them, and makes them available on the net through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan.

In addition to online Internet access, data files and codebooks can be requested by telephone or mail from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data.

Call or write:

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
ICPSR
Institute for Social Research
P.O. Box 1248
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
USA
1-800-999-0960
1-313-763-5011

Ask Archive staff questions via Internet: nacjd@icpsr.umich.edu

Bureau of Justice Statistics
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/
Send comments to askbjs@usdoj.gov

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Page last revised on September 1, 2005