1. Interdisciplinary Legal Research: Data Mining in Legal Matters
TBA
&
Dana Neacsu

2. Hypothetical 1:
In Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the U.S. Supreme Court extended the due process protections of the exclusionary rule to include all “constitutionally unreasonable searches” that were done without a basis of probable cause. In the 7 years after Mapp, homicide rates in the U.S. nearly doubled, riots broke out in at least forty-seven U.S. cities. During the same era, a heroin epidemic gripped the nation’s urban centers, giving rise to street drug markets and associated violence and pressures on law enforcement to curb those markets. As violence increased, a turn in the nation’s political culture questioned Mapp’s restraints on police discretion to stop and search criminal suspects. The result was Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). Can we find the data supporting the jurisprudential change from Mapp to Terry?

3. Macro-management of interdisciplinary legal research: What data
Macro-management of interdisciplinary legal research: What data? From what databases? Free-of charge or proprietary?

4. Crime Statistics U.S. Department of Justice
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
Bureau of Justice Statistics
National Criminal Justice Reference Service
Federal Justice Statistics Resource Center
Bureau of Prisons
Drug Enforcement Administration
Federal Bureau of Investigation
National Insitute of Justice
Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention
U.S. Marshals Service
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Federal Judiciary/U.S. Courts
Justice Research and Statistics Association
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
National Center for Juvenile Justice
National Center for State Courts
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

5. Crime Statistics Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center, University of Albany
Compilation of over 100 sources for data on crime, victims, arrests, seizures, courts, prosecutions, sentencing, prisons and inmates as well as public opinion on crime and criminal justice-related topics and information on criminal justice systems.
Examples
Estimated number and rate (per 100,000 inhabitants) of offenses known to police, by offense, United States
Reported Drug use by type of drug, United States,
Percent distribution of arrests for drug abuse violations
Arrests by the Drug Enforcement Administration
Drug removals from the domestic market by the Drug Enforcement Administration

6. Statistical Abstract of the United States
Census Department until 2012, now ProQuest
Pdf archives available online -
Tabular versions available in ProQuest statistical abstract of the U.S. (search CLIO)
Section 5 – Law Enforcement, Federal Courts and Prisons.
Tables on crime rates, offenses and arrests, police protection, court cases, civil disorders, police protection and prisoners

7. Crime Data, Political Culture, Public Opinion
ICPSR
A vast archive of social science data for research and instruction, over 8,000 titles presented with full documentation and most with data formatted for use in standard statistical packages.
Search by variable or dataset
Raw data
Examples
Political Violence in the United States, (ICPSR 80)
Governmental Responses to Crime in the United States, (ICPSR 8076)
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1979 (ICPSR 6843)
Correlates of Crime: A Study of 52 Nations, (ICPSR 9258)
Public Policy and Socio-Economic Data for Large Cities in the United States, 1960 (ICPSR 65)
Patterns of Behavior in Police and Citizen Transactions: Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC, 1966 (ICPSR 9086)

8. Questions? Dana Neacsu: edn13@Columbia.edu Many thanks to Eric Glass