Public Opinion regarding Crime, Criminal Justice, and Related Topics.

Results of surveys of public opinion regarding topics of importance to criminal justice are widely available from a variety of sources. In addition to national pollsters who regularly include such questions in their periodic pools, governmental commissions often conduct in-depth surveys on specialized topics. Although these public opinion data offer a wealth of critical information which can be of value to criminal justice planners, practitioners, and academians alike, these data have been largely ignored. The primary purpose of this paper is to explore the nature, scope, and sources of public opinion data which are currently available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]