Finding and Analyzing Arrest Data [Data] [Interactive Feature]

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has a pretty cool interactive tool that let you look at arrest statistics from 1980 onward.  The interactive tables also allow you to look at how certain arrest rates differ by race and gender.  You can see an example below.

In order to make this graph I clicked on the "National Estimates" and then selected "Trend Graphs by Sex".  The tool then gave me the option to choose Age Group, Sex, and Offense. If you want to see a trend line for both men and women (as I do above), make sure you select the check box for men and women. After I made all my selected, I click on "Make Rates Graph"

I like that it is easy to generate the graphs - giving  very visual representation of trends. You could ask them to hypothesize how certain offenses might vary by gender, race, or over time. After discussion, you can easily generate a graph to answer the question. They can also easily generate these graphs at home. In addition, you can download the data into Excel.

This would also be a great tool to start a discussion about this type of data.  Are "arrests" good measures of crime? How are rates different from counts?