Course resource help for Criminology

If you want to research a topic, it's a good idea to start with a database. A database is way of finding journal articles (and sometimes other material) on a particular topic or by a particular author.  

All databases will give you the bibliographic information (e.g. author, title, journal name) about an article, some will give you an abstract (brief summary) of the article, and some will also give you the full text as well (i.e. the complete article). Useful databases include:

HeinOnline

HeinOnline includes a large collection of full-text journals, mainly in law. This criminal justice and criminology collection in HeinOnline is particularly strong on American and English topics.

Academic Search Complete

A full-text database providing full articles, with their accompanying indexing and abstracts, across a wide range of subjects.

Sage Journals

This database contains journals published by Sage, covering a wide range of subjects within the social sciences, humanities and life sciences.

Westlaw

Westlaw is a law database, and is useful for researching criminal law and the English and Welsh criminal justice system

Academic journals are key sources for your criminology studies. They publish articles written by specialists in the field and provide an insight into current thinking, debate and research. They can also cover a specific topic in depth, e.g. a case study.

This guide from the Open University (PDF) explains clearly what a journal is, and how they differ from books. An important thing to note is that new issues are regularly published, and that all the issues from one year are known as a volume.  

One reason journal articles are so highly valued is peer review. Find out more about peer review and how it works.

There are many useful journals in criminology and related fields. The following list is not exhaustive but it contains some of the journals that are highly-regarded by criminologists. You will be prompted for your Oxford Brookes log-in.

• British Journal of Criminology

• Theoretical Criminology

• Crime, Media, Culture

• Punishment and Society

• Criminology and Criminal Justice

Once you're on one of the journal homepages, you can see which articles have been published most recently. This is a good way to get a feel of what current criminology research looks like. 

You can also use the search bar to search for a name or topic. If you want to search multiple journals at once, you can use a database.

Online reading lists are a quick way to find what you need to read for your modules.

Search for the module number or module name on the reading list page. You can also find the reading list on the right hand side of any module on Moodle. 

You won't always be expected to read everything on your reading list for each week's topic. Look to see if some items are marked as ‘essential’ and focus on them. You can follow up with things labelled as ‘recommended’ or 'optional' if you choose. 

If you're unclear what reading to prioritise, ask your module leader or seminar leader. To keep track of your progress, you can use the reading intentions options down the right hand side of the reading list and mark items as 'to read' 'have read' etc.

LibrarySearch lets you search for books, ebooks and more. You can search for a specific book or search for a topic or theme. 

Welcome to LibrarySearch: This short video will help you get started with LibrarySearch.

The following two guides show you how to find books and ebooks on LibrarySearch:

• Using LibrarySearch to find a book or ebook when you know the title and author (PDF)

• Using LibrarySearch to find a book or ebook on a specific subject (PDF)

You can use LibrarySearch to see what books the library has, and where they are shelved. The majority of criminology books are on level 2 of Headington library. You can also  download a library floorplan.

See a list of new criminology books and ebooks in the library.

Crime and the media have had a long and complex relationship. To learn more about how to find different types of news resources (from the UK and beyond), have a look at our news sources page.

Police recorded crime (England and Wales):

• Download police recorded crime data in a spreadsheet from the Home Office official statistics webpage.

• Understand how the police recorded data is categorised with this user guide (PDF) from the Home Office.

• View up-to-date crime statistics for Thames Valley Police (You will need to pick a local area from the A-Z list at the bottom of the page)

• View up-to-date crime statistics for other police forces via force websites. Alternatively the Home Office data has a column listing the police force so you may prefer to work from this data if you are comparing multiple areas.

Crime Survey for England and Wales:

• The  Crime Survey for England and Wales asks members of the public about their experiences of crime, so it can pick up crimes not reported to the police.

• View reports of the findings for the most recent year and previous years 

• Download Crime Survey datasets or read more about the findings

Other crime surveys:

• Scottish Crime and Justice Survey

• Northern Ireland Crime Survey

• USA National Crime Victimization Survey

• EU crime and criminal justice statistics

• Canada Uniform Crime Reporting Survey

• Australia crime statistics

• New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey

There is a lot of useful material on crime available online, although you need to think carefully about whether what you find is appropriate for academic work.

You may find this guide to evaluating web resources useful (PDF). You may also want to look at this list of reliable and authoritative websites

Crime and criminal justice have always been popular topics for TV, radio and podcast producers.

Have a look at this curated list of podcasts and thematic TV/radio playlists.