Public Safety

California Attorney General
The attorney general of California’s criminal justice statistics website maintains a wide variety of law enforcement data and reports on public safety issues.

FBI
The FBI’s website for Uniform Crime Reports is the main repository for statistics on reported crime and police agencies in the United States.

U.S. Department of Justice
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics is a clearinghouse for all manner of law enforcement data.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data and statistics web page publishes data sets on injuries documented by hospitals, which provide a measure of violent crime.

California courts
The Judicial Branch of California’s home page is a starting point for online information on the state’s civil and criminal courts.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation releases weekly and monthly statistics on inmate and parole populations. The department also lists all kinds of demographic information about the state’s inmate population, as well as details about recidivism rates. You can also see details about the state’s condemned inmates, including their race.

Criminal Justice Journalists
This guidebook from Criminal Justice Journalists has answers to virtually every question someone writing about public safety and the courts might have. It covers the basic (the difference between larceny and theft) to the complex (how to interview sexual-assault victims).

Sacramento Bee
The Sacramento Bee offers a number of helpful data sets, including the link to an index of inmates held in the Sacramento County Jail, as well as illuminating and sometimes amusing interactive maps.

Orange County Register
The Orange County Register’s data center provides searchable databases documenting local crime, vehicle collisions, animal abuse reports and other public safety records.