8.5 Statistical Information

• Library: A Guide to Legal Research in Virginia (Virginia CLE) (2021 Ed.)

8.5 STATISTICAL INFORMATION

Resolution of some modern legal issues requires statistical analysis as a basis for determining public policy or demonstrating the societal effect of certain rules, decisions, or behaviors. Housing discrimination, employment, antitrust, and consumer protection litigation often involve the use of such statistics. The following are resources for statistical information that the researcher may find helpful:

• Bureau of Justice Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)³² is the primary source for criminal justice statistics in the United States.³³ It provides statistics and data on topics such as corrections, courts, crime type, law enforcement, and victims. This site provides free access to data collections,³⁴ their data analysis tools,³⁵ and the National Crime Victimization Survey,³⁶ which captures both reported and unreported crimes. Data is derived from surveys, censuses, codebooks, data files, and more.

• Data.gov. Washington, DC: U.S. General Services Administration. Data.gov is the home of the U.S. Government's open data. It increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the federal datasets, information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets. The data catalogs³⁷ grow continuously as new datasets are added.

• The Lawyer's Almanac: The Leading Reference of Vital Facts and Figures About the Legal Profession. Riverwoods, IL: Wolters Kluwer

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