Criminal Justice Guide

This list contains words and phrases that may be helpful when researching Criminal Justice topics.

• capital punishment
• community policing
• cyber crime
• death penalty
• domestic terrorism
• domestic violence 
• domestic security
• for profit prisons
• fraud
• hate crime
• human trafficking
• identity theft
• international terrorism
• legalization of marijuana
• mandatory minimum sentencing
• mass shootings
• plea bargain
• presumptive parole
• prison overcrowding
• racial profiling
• restorative justice
• serial killers
• social justice
• threat assessment
• women offenders
• workplace violence

Avoid using Editorials or Letters to the Editor from print or online newspapers. These articles are "opinion pieces" and the authors may lack subject expertise.

Use these reliable fact-checking and bias-checking websites for news articles and websites:

• FactCheck.org (politics)

• Snopes (urban legends, hoaxes, folklore, memes, and rumors)   

• Climate Feedback (climate change)

• AFP (choose news, world regions, topics - health, environment, science, politics)   

• MediaBias/Fact Check (analyzes news and other website bias and contains a list of questionable sources).

• AllSides (reviews how the same news story is covered across the political spectrum - from the left, the center, and the right).                                                                                   

Credible Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other social media posts of "first-hand" accounts of current happenings, such as political rallies, strikes, protest, and entertainment events may be used as primary sources. These sources are analyzed by you, the writer (Coleman, 2013, p.60). Social media should not be used as expert analyses or interpretations to support your argument.  

Sources:

Auraria Library (n.d.). Social media as a primary source. https://guides.auraria.edu/
       c.php?g=323480&p=2863867

Coleman, V. (2013, November/December). Social media as a primary source: A coming of age.
       Educause Review, 48(6), 60-61. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2013/12/
       social-media-as-a-primary-source-a-coming-of-age

Primary sources are first-hand accounts of an event, or original documents or data. Examples of primary sources include:

• newspaper articles from the time of the event, photographs, video, or audio that show the event;

• speeches or interviews; 

• company financial statements, government documents, academic articles containing original ("empirical") research;
  
  and

• transcripts of court trials or hearings, legal cases, statutes, and administrative rules or regulations.

Use primary sources for contemporaneous accounts, raw data, and to identify empirical research.
 

Secondary sources describe, analyze, review, interpret or are based on primary sources. Examples of secondary sources include:

• Encyclopedia articles

• News articles about past events

• Textbooks

• Scholarly journal articles

• Reviews

Use secondary sources for analyses, reviews, or summaries of information from primary sources or other secondary sources.
 

Bowdoin College Library. (n.d.). Primary and secondary sources. https://library.bowdoin.edu/research/
        primary-and-secondary-sources.shtml

NorthCentral University Library. (2021, November 2). Primary and secondary resources.     
        https://ncu.libguides.com/researchprocess/primaryandsecondary.

University of Illinois Library. (2021, October 22). Information sciences 505: Information organization and access: Primary vs 
        secondary sources. https://guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=347168&p=2342340