Finding Sources

Sources for the history of policing can be found numerous classes of historical record.  This page lists a variety of such classes and offers links to resources for exploring them. We start with two general resources: HOLLIS and HathiTrust.

Searching in HOLLIS

It is important to find the proper Subject terms for your topic and use them as well as any keywords that occur to you. Any pertinent book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record. These terms are best searched in Library Catalog rather than Catalog & Articles. Use the Library Catalog Advanced Search option and change Keywords Anywhere to Subject for cleanest results.

For HOLLIS, use the “Starts With/Browse” link on the basic search screen and choose “Other call number”. Enter Soc 3400. This yields a host of books and periodicals on police, many of which are hard to isolate in keyword searches.  Soc 3500 - Soc 3600 goes on to punishment and penology.

Any pertinent book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries published later, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record.  Change Any field to Subject for cleanest results.   

  • --Archives
  • --Correspondence
  • --Description and travel
  • --Diaries
  • --Manuscripts
  • --Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
  • --Personal narratives (refers to accounts of wars and diseases only)
  • --Sources (usually refers to collections of published primary sources)

Examples:

  • Documenting American violence : a sourcebook, ed. by Christopher Waldrep and Michael Bellesiles. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006, xiv, 399 p. HOLLIS record
  • Professional law enforcement codes : a documentary collection,  John Kleinig with Yurong Zhang. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993, 273 p. HOLLIS record
  • The police in America : classic and contemporary readings, ed. Steven G. Brandl and David E. Barlow. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004, 420 p. HOLLIS record
  • The role of police in American society : a documentary history, ed. by Bryan Vila and Cynthia Morris. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1999, xxxvii, 318 p. HOLLIS record

Digital Libraries

Hathitrust is a huge general digital library similar to, and partly overlapping in content with, Google Books and Internet Archive but with some special features.  You can do a full text search over the whole collection of millions of books and journals and then effectively refine the results. Use Full Text Advanced Search. Thus, the phrase "police brutality" is found 1123 times in works published from 1940-1949. You can search for a keyword in, say, travel books (Subject term: "Description and travel") on a certain country for a specified time period.  Pre-1923 and some later material will be full text viewable as well as searchable. For copyrighted material, you can find out on what page your term occurs.

Much full text material is available in the Internet Archive. More about HathiTrust and the Internet Archive.

Making of Modern Law (Legal Treatises 1800-1926)

In Basic Search, adjusting the Search Type to Subject and searching Police yields 68 books.

Other digital Libraries and Collections are listed in the Library Research Guide for History.

Lloyd Sealy Library Digital Collections at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790-1920 contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals.  Covers Europe, North America, India, Australia, and New Zealand.  Includes material in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. 

The Digital Public Library of America offers textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums.  Searches catalog records, not full text, and links to the items on the contributors' websites.  Contains many individual items, such as letters and photographs, from digital collections.

Digital Libraries by State

These websites list hundreds of local, state, and regional resources. Each is different and some are better designed than others.  Very useful when your topic has a regional focus.

Commissions, Reports

United States Commission on Civil Rights: reports on the police, ed. by Gabriel J. Chin. Buffalo, N.Y. : Hein, 2005. 3 v. HOLLIS record

U.S. National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, or commonly the Wickersham Commission, established in 1929 by President Herbert Hoover, headed by former U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham. Vol. 14 is Report on police.

United States. Wickersham Commission. Publications, 1930-31. 14 v.
FindIt@Harvard
Online version
--Volume 14: Report on police

American police systems, by Raymond B. Fosdick. New York, Century Co., 1920, x, 408 p. fold. diagrs.
Google Books version
HOLLIS record

Publications of the Bureau of Social Hygiene.

Diaries and Other Personal Writings

Many diaries, letters and  other personal writings are available in print or full text online.

To find them in HOLLIS search: Policewomen AND (diaries OR archives OR correspondence OR Interviews).

For HOLLIS, use the “Browse HOLLIS By…” link on the basic search screen and choose “Other call number”. Enter Soc 3400. This yields several memoirs and autobiographies which are not tagged as such.

  • Memoirs of American prisons : an annotated bibliography, by Daniel Suvak. Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press, 1979. viii, 227 p. HOLLIS record
    Internet Archive Full Text
  • American prisoners and ex-prisoners, their writings : an annotated bibliography of published works, 1798-1981, by H. Bruce Franklin. Westport, Conn. : L. Hill, 1982, 53 p. HOLLIS record
  • Breaking & entering : women cops talk about life in the ultimate men's club, by Connie Fletcher. New York, NY : HarperCollins, 1995, 298 p. HOLLIS record
  • Law enforcement, race relations, 1930-1960 : an interview, Robert B. Powers ; conducted by Amelia R. Fry. (Earl Warren Oral History Project) Berkeley : University of California, Bancroft Library/Berkeley, Regional Oral History Office, 1971, xii, 180 leaves, Appendices (p. 77-177) include photocopied newspaper clippings and correspondence. HOLLIS record. Online version.

Law enforcement, race relations, 1930-1960 : an interview, Robert B. Powers ; conducted by Amelia R. Fry. (Earl Warren Oral History Project) Berkeley : University of California, Bancroft Library/Berkeley, Regional Oral History Office, 1971, xii, 180 leaves,
Appendices (p. 77-177) include photocopied newspaper clippings and correspondence.
FindIt@Harvard
Online version
--The Earl Warren Oral History Project Offers other oral history interviews on California law enforcement
--Robert B. Powers (1900-1976) was a prominent California police officer

Autobiographies usually bear the Subject term Biography, and so are not distinguished from biographies. The search Autobiographies OR Autobiography yields many autobiographies, but by no means all.

Oral History Online indexes oral history collections, with links to interview-level bibliographic records and to full-text materials, audio files and visual files where these are available.

Films/Videos

To find films in HOLLIS, search your topic keywords, then on the left side of the results screen, look at Resource Type and choose video/film.

To find books about films about your topic, search Topic keywords AND "in motion pictures"

The WGBH Open Vault includes many police-related videos.

Other sources for film and video are listed in the Library Research Guide for History, which also has pages for television and radio.

Government Sources

ProQuest Congressional provides indexing for Congressional publications dating from 1790 to the present. Post-1970, full-text access is often available. Publications included are Committee Hearings, House and Senate Documents, House and Senate Reports, Senate Executive Reports, Senate Executive Treaty Documents, Legislative Histories, Serial Set Maps, Serial Set. More information from ProQuest. ProQuest has a Research Guide to Government Documents.

Hathitrust includes numerous government documents. 

  • In Catalog Advanced Search, you can use a government department or agency name as author.
  • In Full Text Advanced Search, you can use a government department or agency name as author, "Add another group of search fields", and add a Subject.

HathiTrust also offers:

FBI Records: The Vault

State Documents

State List: The Electronic Source of State Publications. Coverage varies by state, generally 1990s- .

Monthly checklist of state publications (Title varies), 1910-1994). Library of Congress.
Documents (Lamont) | Harvard Depository | US Doc 5002.20
Online version

Index to current urban documents, 1972-1992.
HOLLIS record

Images

ARTstor offers innumerable images from art but also from a variety of humanities and social science fields. Other. sources for images are listed in the Library Research Guide for History, including sources for advertisements..

For depictions in art: Guide to Research in History of Art & Architecture

Combining your topical words with the phrase "Pictorial Works" in HOLLIS yields books that are largely composed of pictures.

Legal Sources

Trial transcripts are rarely published, but where a case has been appealed, the report of the case is often available.  See Research Guide for History 97g: "What is Legal History?" for sources.  For searching cases in NEXIS Uni by topic.  Many 19th century trial transcripts are available. 

Local Police Departments

Some publications of the Boston and New York City Police are given on the City and State Documents page.

In Hathitrust catalog search you can search keywords: police report, and Limit To: Full view only.  On the left side of the Results page, you can limit to Place of Publication: United States.  Be careful with date limitations.  If you want a report for 1950, the report series may have started in, say, 1923, and 1923 will be the date on the HathiTrust record.

Publications of many police departments can be found in HOLLIS or WorldCat by searching in HOLLIS on Police Periodicals as a Subject keyword search and adding the name of your city/state of interest.

Often local public or university libraries will have research guides for city documents. Example: New York City Documents

Boston Police Strike of 1919

News Sources

See Guide to Newspapers and Newspaper Indexes for general and minority papers.

American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside

American underworld: the flash press (19th Century). The “Flash Press” covered gambling, prostitution, urban gangs, illicit sporting activities, and sensational crime

Pamphlets reporting sensational 19th century trials

Broadcast news:

  • Boston TV News Digital Library (1960-2000)
  • Television News of the Civil Rights Era, 1950-1970 offers television news footage from the nightly news from two local television stations in Virginia.
  • Television News Archive (Vanderbilt University) (1968-) indexes the collection of network television news programs at Vanderbilt University. Abstracts searchable by keyword to find information and/or request videotape loans. Online video is available for CNN news broadcasts from October 1995 to the present.
  • American History in Video has numerous modern documentaries together with newsreels from 1929 to the present.
  • Internet Archive includes films, radio audio clips, news clips, educational films, advertisements, industry films, etc.

Policy Literature, Working Papers, Think Tank Reports

Policy institute, think tanks and related organizations often publish their reports themselves so they do not appear in the ordinary sources. These two sources offer access to this literature.

PolicyFile (1990-). Go to  the Subject List and choose Law Enforcement. Then check U.S. Domestic.

Think Tank Search - from the Kennedy School of Government, a customized Google search of documents produced by think tanks.

Prisons

19th Century Prison Reform Collection

The Visiting Room Project - a collection of interviews with imprisoned people serving life without parole sentences at Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. 

American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside

Bandits & Bibles : convict literature in nineteenth-century America, ed. by Larry E. Sullivan. New York : Akashic ; London : Turnaround, 2003. 243 p.
FindIt@Harvard

Annual report of the Board of Inspectors of the Massachusetts State Prison ... together with the annual reports of the officers of the institution. Boston : Dutton and Wentworth, 1852-
FindIt@Harvard

Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (1857-1920)

Memoirs of American prisons : an annotated bibliography, by Daniel Suvak. Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow Press, 1979. viii, 227 p.
FindIt@Harvard

American prisoners and ex-prisoners, their writings : an annotated bibliography of published works, 1798-1981, by H. Bruce Franklin. Westport, Conn. : L. Hill, 1982, 53 p.
FindIt@Harvard

Statistics and Opinion Polls

HOLLIS search for ("Criminal justice" OR prison*) AND Statistics AND "United States"

Sources of national criminal justice statistics: an annotated bibliography, by Nicolette Parisi. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, 1977. HOLLIS record

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) HOLLIS record

Uniform Crime Reports FBI 1930-2005 (incomplete). A few years missing supplied.

--How to use the Uniform crime reports. 1947
--Uniform crime reporting handbook. FBI 1984
--Ten year index Uniform crime reports, for the United States and its possessions. FBI 1930-1939.

Note that in Hathitrust Advanced Full Text Search, you can put the phrase “Uniform crime reports” in the Title field and search your keywords in the Full Text field. 

Uniform crime reports for the United States (1930-1997) HOLLIS record

Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1973-2005
LLMC version
Heinonline version
HOLLIS record

Race of prisoners admitted to state and federal institutions, 1926-1986, by Patrick A. Langan. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1991, 54 p.
HOLLIS Record

County and city data book. Bureau of the Census, 1947-
HOLLIS record

Public Opinion Data Resources

United States Census Data Resources

Other sources for statistics and data are listed in the Library Research Guide for History.