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Article databases

Databases are highly organized catalogues that include published materials such as journal articles, newspaper articles, magazines, books and videos.  Some databases are discipline specific, so for example, Criminology databases likely contain a variety of journals that specialize in criminal justice and law as a topic.  Every database is slightly different, but they all allow you to search by topic or keyword, subject, author, title and phrase. 

Finding too much?

  • Use AND between ideas to search for BOTH terms
  • Put “Quotation Marks Around Your Search" to search for exact phrases

Finding too little?

  • Use OR between your ideas to search for EITHER term
  • Put * after the root of a word to look for multiple endings

For better searching, think of multiple ways to describe your topic

Select Databases

​CanLII - Canadian Legal Information Institute  - Web resource that provides full-text of federal and provincial statutes and regulations, jurisprudence as well as various types of secondary law materials from law reviews, treatises, reports and articles. 

National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts - Provides summaries of more than 190,000 publications focusing on law enforcement and criminal justice, including books, government reports, research reports, and unpublished research. It also includes content from 189 journals, Topics covered within the database include corrections, courts, crime statistics, domestic preparedness, drugs, juvenile justice. Includes good Canadian content.

ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) - Contains specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) Human Trafficking Knowledge Portal- Offers very easy to use international (with Canadian content) case law, legislation and article databases.  

Google Scholar Search

Yes, Google does article searches! Go in through this link and find out what Google Scholar has that you can get full-text through our library.

Google Scholar Search

Finding Statistics

Juristat - In depth analysis and detailed Canadian statistics on a variety of topics and issues related to justice and public safety

Statistics Canada - Stats Canada is the official national statistics site. 

Crime and Justice - A sub page of the Stats Canada site with a focus on police, crime and court statistics. 

Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics - statistics related to crime and victims of crime prepared by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP).

State of the Criminal Justice System Dashboard - Organized by 9 high level outcomes or themes.  Select an outcome an view infographs and downloadable data related to that theme and related categories. 

Cannabis Stats Hub - Statistics Canada one stop place for statistical information relating to Health, Justice, Economy and other topics.

ODESI -  (Ontario Data Documentation, Extraction Service and Infrastructure) Digital repository for social science data including polling data. 

Contact Your Librarian

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Madelaine Vanderwerff
she/her

Contact:
Email: mvanderwerff@mtroyal.ca
Office: EL4441M

Legal Aspects of Policing

Legal Aspects of Policing is a two volume loose leaf that is updated annually. It is the leading Canadian resource on the subject of how law regulates policing and also contains selected material from Commonwealth jurisdictions. You can find it on the third floor of the library KE 5006.A6 C48