This volume collects statistical tables from nine US government reports on crime and correctional populations from the Department of Justice and its subsidiaries, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Although the introduction refers to the volume as the “first-ever comprehensive collection of justice statistics” (p. xv), “comprehensive” is an overstatement, as it draws only on selected reports of the many available. In some cases, not all of the content of a particular source report is included in the volume – e.g. omitted are the tables on “Clearances”, the percentage of crimes for which an offender is arrested and prosecuted or identified and unavailable to prosecute (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2014). The volume does, however, provide substantial and useful information.
Several of the sections included report on specific types of crimes (crimes against persons with disabilities, assaults and deaths of law enforcement officers, and rape/sexual assaults of college-age women, as well as hate-crimes, which include crimes based on the perceived race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, disability, or gender identity). Other sections provide statistics on inmate populations, capital punishment, probation, and parole.
Coverage of particular crimes is limited by the source material: BJS and FBI statistics cover violent crimes and property crimes in the greatest detail. The lack of available source data results in limited or no information about other sorts of crimes, such as drug offenses, prostitution, human trafficking, gambling, driving under the influence, or other vehicular offences.
Each of the nine sections of the volume includes a Highlights page, noting key findings from each report. Each section ends with a one or two page methodology section providing information useful in understanding the statistics reported in that section. Thus, though the volume primarily presents tabular data from the original reports, it does include some important context for the data. Extensive endnotes provide references for each table. The index is detailed with several levels of subheadings, making specific tables and topics easy to find within the volume.
The volume is suitable for most libraries. Although the information is freely available online through a variety of government reports, the book does make the data more convenient to access and navigate. The introduction to the book includes URLs for each original government publication from which the book draws its data, directing users to more complete information when necessary. Libraries for which navigating online government data is a routine task may find the volume unnecessary, but those with less experience may find it useful to have a single volume available for crime statistics. The volume can also serve as a useful gateway to the government reports for users who might not know where to start.
Many of the reports that the volume is based on are not annual publications, so one might not expect this to be an annual publication from Bernan Press. Bernan's website, however, indicates that a second edition will be available in October 2016 (Bernan Press 2016). Libraries interested in the volume may wish to order the second edition rather than the first, or determine the relationship between the contents of the two editions before proceeding with the purchase.
