We understand that different people search for information in different ways. To support this, the BJS site provides many different ways to navigate. Our content is organized in three distinct ways: by topic; by information type; and by data collection. You can search our content via known key words, release dates, topic, or information type. Finally, a site map and A-Z index are provided for those wishing to get a "bird's eye view" of the information available on the site.

Browsing by topic Browsing by information type Browsing by data collection

Browsing by topic

BJS products and data are primarily organized by criminal justice topic. To get started, choose a topic or subtopic from the persistent navigation on the left side of the page. By default, the navigation will be collapsed to show only primary topics. To expand the lists of second-level topics, click on the triangles to the left of the primary topic labels (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - Expansion of second-level topics list


To view 3rd and 4th level subtopics, click on the triangles to the right of the secondary topics. In this case, a persistent popup will provide an overview of all subtopics below the secondary level. To close the popup window, click on the red "x" to the upper right of the window.

Figure 2 - Expansion of 3rd and 4th level topics list


At any point, clicking on a topic label directly will take you to the page for that particular topic. The topic pages provide access to all associated information resources available, including summary findings, latest releases, publications, data tables, press releases, FAQs, data collections and tools for data analysis. These resources are only visible if they exist for a particular topic.

Browsing by information type

The top navigational menus beneath the BJS banner provide access to our content grouped by type (publication, data table, data collection, FAQ, etc). To see an overall index of a particular content type across all topics, click directly on the label (for example "publications and products").

You can also narrow your search by choosing an option from the dropdown menu to filter the results according to a particular topic or product

Figure 3 - Accessing content lists by information type using the top navigation

Once you make a selection from the top navigation, you'll see the applicable listings sorted by title (by default). Click on an item to drill down to get further details. For publications, the headers at the top of the results table are active links that allow you to resort the listings by type (publication, data table, press release), title, or release date.

Figure 4 - Resorting publication index by clicking on header labels

At the top of each of our topic pages, jump links are provided that take you directly to listings (grouped by information type) that apply to that topic. In general, full listings are supressed to limit scrolling. Links to more extended lists are provided at the end of each section

Browsing by data collection

All of our products and summary findings are based on data collections. To browse by data collection, click on the "data collections" link in the top navigation below the banner. You may also choose to filter the data collections by primary topic via the dropdown menu.

You will be presented with an index of listings. Click on the data collection title to see the profile page containing descriptions, periodicity, methodologies, data experts, and other details. Listings of related products and topics provide links to the data products and site pages associated with the collection.