In order for you to find information (statistics and examples) to interpret, you will need to be familiar with the resources that provide you with Criminal Justice information. 

To begin with, familiarize yourself with some of the online Criminal Justice research guides that collect and organize online Criminal Justice resources: 

• The CSULB Department of Criminal Justice Research Links: http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/chhs/departments/criminal-justice/research...
• The CSULB Library’s Criminal Justice Research Guide: http://csulb.libguides.com/crju
• The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Library Guide: http://guides.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/criminaljustice

These meta-sites offer you a gluttony of resources, and it can sometimes be a little bit overwhelming. Sometimes it can be hard to know where to begin. In an attempt to make the beginning of your research more manageable, I would like to highlight some key sites for finding Criminal Justice information, both statistics and examples. 

First, here are a few key online resources for finding quantitative information (statistics, data, facts, figures, charts, etc.) that every Criminal Justice writer needs to be familiar with:

• The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr-publications
• The Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://www.bjs.gov/
• The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/
• The Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics: http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/
• The CA Attorney General’s Crime Data: http://oag.ca.gov/crime
• The L.A. Times’ Crime L.A.: http://maps.latimes.com/crime/
• The U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/#

Second, here are a handful of key online resources for finding qualitative information (both current and historical examples, cases, criminals, and the like) that every Criminal Justice writer should know about:

• The Crime Report: http://www.thecrimereport.org/
• CNN Justice: http://www.cnn.com/JUSTICE/
• The Huffington Post Crime: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/crime/
• LA Times Crime: http://crime.latimes.com/
• Long Beach Press-Telegram Crime: http://www.presstelegram.com/crime
• The FBI’s Famous Cases & Criminals: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/famous_cases_criminals
• Time’s Crimes of the Century: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1937349,...
• About.com’s Famous Crimes and Criminals: http://crime.about.com/od/history/u/famous.htm
• Douglas Linder’s Famous Trials: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ftrials.htm
• Wikipedia’s List of United States Criminals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_criminals

I have one final note: when searching for examples, don’t let yourself be too seduced by the spectacular. It is true that highly publicized cases are highly publicized for a reason – usually because they tap into some anxiety, shift, or contradiction in our culture – and for that reason they deserve our attention, but exceptional cases, by virtue of their exceptionality, are not the normal cases that most Criminal Justice professionals deal with on a day-to-day basis, whether those professionals are out on the street, in an office, or on a campus. Sometimes an interpretation of an unexceptional or routine case – the kind of case that occurs on every street in every city – can be more valuable than another interpretation of a case that everyone knows about because it is all over our television and computer screens. For this reason, don’t shy away from examples drawn from your own life and your own neighborhood or hometown (thus, be sure to take a look at your local paper). Narrating and analyzing such cases in your research papers can give your audiences what every reader wants, what every paper ought to communicate: information and knowledge that the reader does not already have.