Political Science 303: Policing and Politics

Topics in criminology and justice have many aspects including sociological, psychological, public policy, religious, etc. Following is a list of some of the major databases and indexes relevant to this topic. Many of these databases have direct links to full-text either through hyperlinks or the Find it at Emory button.

The following two databases are the most important for sociology and cover this topic. While there is overlap between the two, each has much unique material:

• Sociological Abstracts (1952-date)
• Indexes and abstracts the international literature in sociology and related fields. Covers almost 2000 journals, plus relevant dissertation listings, abstracts of conference papers, and selected books. This is a smaller, more academic database with more foreign language material than SocINDEX. 
• SocINDEX with Full Text (1895-date)
  Indexes and abstracts over 2500 journals, conference papers, and relevant books and dissertations in sociology and related fields. Includes some popular literature. Includes additional full-text for many (but not all) citations. Provides deep historical coverage for major journals, e.g. American Journal of Sociology is indexed back to 1895.

Another important database for the political aspects of crime and justice is

Political Science Complete

Another important database for the behavioral aspects of crime and justice is:

• PsycINFO (1807-present)
  Covers the professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines. Includes journals of interest to sociologists but not covered in the standard sociology databases, e.g. Law and Human Behavior. Coverage is worldwide and includes references and abstracts to over 1300 journals in over 20 languages, and to English language books and book chapters.

To cover the legal issues:

• HEIN ONLINE  Full-text searchable database of over 150 legal periodicals. Scope varies for different publications and latest years are not usually covered; see the journal list on the website for details.

• Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic Universe) also covers many legal as well general sources. Check out link to major U.S. Supreme Court rulings on this topic.

Also use:

• National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts
  Contains summaries of more than 170,000 criminal justice publications, including federal, state, and local government reports, books, journal articles and unpublished research.

For a significant selection of articles on police reform, policing trends and dynamics, please visit my colleague, Evan Rusch's guide on Police Reform (page dedicated to recent research). Note that these titles link out to University of Minnesota collections, so it is recommended that you cut and paste these titles into Google Scholar to access Emory's subscribed versions. Be sure that you have Emory "library links" activated in Google Scholar (see section of guide on accessing materials remotely).