NCJRS Virtual Library

Established in 1972, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) is an Office of Justice Programs (OJP) resource offering support and information to further justice-related research, policy, and program development. 

The NCJRS Virtual Library hosts a collection of over 235,000 information resources on criminal justice subjects, including corrections, courts, drugs, law enforcement, juvenile justice, victims of crime, and related topics. The Virtual Library provides access to all known OJP works and sponsored research, as well as to thousands of government products, research reports, journal articles, and published and unpublished literature produced through 2014.

Through its collection of over 235,000 information resources on criminal justice subjects, the NCJRS Virtual Library provides access to all known OJP works and sponsored research, as well as to thousands of government products, research reports, journal articles, and published and unpublished literature produced through 2014.

The collection has been developed to meet the needs of professionals, researchers, policymakers, and technical and legal experts in the criminal justice, juvenile justice, and drug/substance abuse fields. Focused subject areas of the collection include corrections, courts, crime prevention, criminology, drugs, juveniles, law enforcement, statistics, technology, and victims of crime.

The NCJRS Virtual Library’s New Additions service allows users to view the most recent resources added to the collection. Resources housed in the collection include all known OJP works and sponsored research, as well as thousands of Federal, State, and local government products; research reports; journal articles; and published and unpublished literature on a wide range of criminal and juvenile justice topics produced through 2014.

Search operations are limited to exact match term or phrase searching. Search returns will include collection records that have only an exact match of the entered search term or phrase. Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and command characters (quotation marks, proximity operators, etc.) are not currently supported by the NCJRS Virtual Library search interface.

To conduct a search of the NCJRS Virtual Library collection visit the search page. Once on the search page… 

1. Expand the Search Filters accordion.
2. Select your desired filters or leave the default settings. You may filter by…
   • Full Text Availability – You may select ANY, YES (full text available only), or NO (hardcopy available only).
   • OJP Program Office – Denotes a specific OJP Program Office authored or sponsored the resource.
3. Enter a term or phrase in any of the presented search criteria fields. Search criteria fields include…
   • General – A composite search across various catalog fields.
   • Title – A search strictly looking at a resource title.
   • Journal – A search restricted to resources from a specific Journal Title.
   • NCJ Number – NCJ Number is the NCJRS Virtual Library unique catalog identifier. A search using the NCJ Number will only return a single catalog record.
   • Author – A search restricted to resources from a specific Author.
   • Published After and Published Before – Setting these “date published” parameters (mm/yyyy) will limit the search to resources published during the expressed date range.
4. Select how you would prefer the results set to be presented.
   • You may Sort by…
     • Date Published [default]
     • Date Added to the collection
     • Title (alphabetically)
     • NCJ Number (numerically)
   • You may also select how you would like the results Ordered…
     • Descending (highest to lowest) [default]
     • Ascending (lowest to highest)
5. Click on the blue "Submit all selections" button.

Initial search returns are sorted by Date Published in descending order (newest to oldest). However, you can modify this prior to your search (reference “Search the Collection”).

Additionally, you may edit an executed search by opening the “Use Search Filters” accordion presented above the search results listing. The criteria entered for your initial search will be presented in the accordion and you may modify your search criteria and execute a new search.

While searching the NCJRS Virtual Library collection you will encounter links to online materials. Be mindful of copyright restrictions with any reuse or repurposing – even online accessible information is covered by U.S. copyright restrictions.

The NCJRS Virtual Library does not hold the copyright for any of the materials housed in the collection. Transmission or reproduction of protected items beyond that allowed by Fair Use as defined in U.S. copyright law requires permission of the copyright owners. It is the responsibility of the user to examine the copyright and licensing restrictions of linked pages and to secure all necessary permission if further use of these materials is desired.

Note that online Federal government information accessed through the collection is in the public domain. This information may be freely distributed and copied; however, in any subsequent use the authoring agency should be cited and given appropriate acknowledgement. Materials authored or published by other, non-government organizations may be protected by U.S. and foreign copyright laws. These links are provided for the convenience of Internet access. 

More detailed information pertaining to copyright restrictions of resources accessed through NCJRS Virtual Library services is provided in the Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan sections below.

Many resources — and most resources published by OJP Program Offices since 1995 — are available in online, full-text format. Links to these online resources are included in the NCJRS Virtual Library catalog records and appear in the search result entries. Note that, in addition to full-text document links, links to publisher web sites or other relevant resources may also be provided.

Many of the publications housed in the NCJRS Virtual Library collection are available at local libraries and the NCJRS Virtual Library provides a function for you to search these collections through the "Find in a Library" feature. At times, it might be faster, cheaper, and/or more convenient to access the documents you find in the NCJRS Virtual Library collection at a library in your area.

When presented on a catalog record page click the "Find in a Library" link to discover if a particular NCJRS Virtual Library resource is available at your local library. By clicking on the "Find in a Library" link from a catalog record you will access OCLC WorldCat®, a global consortium of over 10,000 libraries, and be able to check if the document you are interested in is available at your local library. After connecting with WorldCat® you can filter the results by your City and State, or ZIP code, and see libraries local to you that may have the desired resource in their collections.