Criminal Justice and Legal Studies

CJ Searching has librarian-recommended search tips to help you make the most of your research time.

Step 1: Choose an area of interest

  • deinstitutionalization
  • probation
  • restorative justice
  • offenders
  • ex-offenders
  • parole
  • rehabilitation
  • recidivism
  • community-based corrections
  • victim’s rights
  • public safety
  • substance abuse
  • mental illness
  • race or ethnicity
  • gender
  • economics

​Step 2: Combine Keywords and Tricks to Improve Your Search

Adding AND narrows a topic

  • Reentry AND Employment
  • Juvenile AND "Sex Offender"
  • Female Offenders AND Parole AND Mississippi
  • Health Care AND Prison*

Adding OR in (parentheses) broadens a topic

  • Reentry OR Re-Entry
  • ​(Recidivism OR Desistance) AND Drugs
  • Women AND (Probation OR Parole)
  • Teenagers AND Murder AND Sentenc*

Special Characters to use:

  • Use parantheses to indicate phrases that need to have words side by side. Example: "stop and frisk" "juvenile delinquent" "race relations"
  • Use a wild card to catch multiple spellings of a common word. Example: wom?n will find "woman" and "women". Col?r will find "color" and "colour"
  • Use the truncation symbol to catch multiple compound words in a single search. Example: Sentenc* will catch the words, "sentencing," "sentence," "sentences," etc. 

Keyword Tips:

  • Capitalization generally does not matter
  • Spelling counts!
  • Use advanced searching to turn your keywords into SUBJECTS for more focused search results
  • Try the same search in a different database