lawyer

Law enforcement is the term that describes the individuals and agencies responsible for enforcing laws and maintaining public order and public safety. Law enforcement includes the prevention, detection, and investigation of crime and the apprehension and detention of individuals suspected of law violation.

The BJS Law Enforcement Unit maintains more than a dozen national data collections covering federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies and special topics in law enforcement. Most data series are collected every 2 to 4 years and focus on aggregate or agency-level responses, meaning the information that is collected pertains to units, such as police departments, training academies, and crime labs. The data from law enforcement agencies provide national estimates for personnel, equipment, operations, agency policies, budgets, and job functions across agencies. The Law Enforcement Unit collects data on contacts between the public and police, special units within law enforcement agencies, and trends in police organization.

This website is organized so that specific types of agencies and issues related to law enforcement can be accessed through designated links. Each webpage provides a brief description of the topic and highlights key findings from our most current reports. More detailed information is available in our full reports, which can be retrieved through links in the Publications and Products section of the webpage. In addition to our most current publications, reports from earlier administrations of the series and supporting materials are provided when available. Codebooks displaying both detailed information about the data collection process and notable features of the data, survey instruments, and actual data files are available electronically and can be obtained through links in the Data Collection and Surveys section of the webpage. A complete listing of our core and supplementary data collections is available below.