This assignment requires you to explore state and federal jurisdiction in criminal prosecutions. The Library has lots of reliable resources, including reference books and journals, which will help you explore crimes against persons and the role cultural factors play in prosecutions.

Studies continually demonstrate a correlation between improved grades and library usage, so be sure to use the suggested research strategies provided on this page. ​

Starting Out

Gale eBooks is a great database to begin your research. This database consists of reliable reference encyclopedias and handbooks, giving you an overview of the topic.

Suggested search phrases to try: 

• criminal prosecution
• state and federal jurisdictions

Finding Journal Articles and other Publications

To search for reputable journal articles, search ProQuest Criminal Justice, a subset of ProQuest Central that focuses just on the law enforcement-related journals provided by ProQuest. This helps focus your research and cuts out publication types unlikely to have good info on this topic like newspapers.

Need more?

You can also try expanding your search by using the search box on the Search page of this research guide. This box, powered by EBSCO Discovery Service, will expand the resources beyond just ProQuest Criminal Justice and include everything EBSCO and our other databases has to offer.  

For example, in the large search box, type the phrase criminal prosecution "cultural defense" and select SEARCH.  Be sure to Include the quotation marks as shown above because they tell the database to look for the words together as a phrase.

Additional searches to try may include:

• united states criminal court system jurisdiction
• criminal defendants "cultural defense"
• criminal law  "cultural defense"
• crime "cultural influence" ethnicity factors