The Commission is aware that statistics have been prepared giving the relative crime rates of different national groups, and has inquired into the sources of such statistics. In one case, for example, population estimates were based on 1910 census figures, arbitrarily increased by one-third. But when the abnormal situation with respect to immigration caused by the war, to mention only one important disturbing factor, is taken into consideration, it will be appreciated that any estimate is of doubtful value for careful calculation.
After much study and experimentation, and particularly after the counsel of statistical authorities had been obtained, the Commission's plan to work out comparative racial crime tables was abandoned.
Aside from the striking discrepancies between the crime figures of the Police Department and those of the Chicago Crime Commission, it is doubtful whether a reliable index to Negro crime as a separate item could be obtained even if the police figures showed the whole, instead of one-fifth or one-half, of the crimes committed.[45]
It was brought out in the testimony of judges and other authorities that Negroes are more easily identified and more likely to be arrested, and it is reasonably certain that a smaller proportion of Negroes who commit crimes escape than whites. But there is absolutely no means of determining what proportion of crime unrecorded by the police or other authorities is committed by whites or Negroes.
Adequate comparison of criminal statistics requires at least comparable units. This is rarely taken into account in comparing Negro and white crime. For example: a true comparison of relative crime rates between the two groups would require that the age distribution in each should be the same. For, although the population figures include children, women, and old persons, the greatest proportion of crimes is committed by persons within what is known to criminologists as the "violent ages," or between eighteen and thirty. If the population is overbalanced in these ages the crime rate will be exaggerated. Such an overbalance exists in the Negro population because of the migration to Chicago of more than 50,000 Negroes, mainly adults. Besides, a greater proportion of these adults were men without families, another factor known to overweight crime figures. It is a curious fact, however, that, although the Negro population of Chicago increased from 2.1 per cent of the total in 1914 to 4.5 per cent in 1919, an increase of more than 100 per cent, the Negro crime rate during the same period increased 50 per cent, or less than half as rapidly as the Negro population.
The court cases studied intensively by the Commission show that the majority of Negro criminals are recruited from the lowest economic class of the Negro group. The frequency with which these persons are taken to the Bureau of Identification; their inability to provide bonds; their lack of means to employ attorneys, and their commitment on account of inability to pay fines, all tend to emphasize the relation between poverty and crime. The economic factors, as well as the actual commission of crime, determine largely the size of groups eligible for arrest and conviction. For example, laborers are likely to contribute more crimes proportionate to the total than salaried men, and salaried men more than professional men. The proportion of white laboring men to the total white population is considerably smaller than the proportion of Negro laboring men to the total Negro population. As a consequence, the "eligibles" for arrest and conviction are fewer in the white group than in the Negro group.
The reports of the City Council Committee on Crime, known as the "Merriam Report," and of the Chicago Vice Commission, both indicate that the economic factor is an important cause of both vice and crime. The following is from the Vice Commission report:
Among the reasons why women or girls enter the life of prostitution, the economic question plays a more or less conspicuous part. The low wages paid, the long hours of standing, insanitary conditions under which girls work in factories—all these have a powerful effect on a woman's or girl's nerves or physical force.
First among these causes [for prostitution] should be named unfavorable home conditions.... Often when the home is not entirely degraded there are conditions of crowding and poverty which lead to misfortune. Working all day, the girls are often obliged to work at home in the evening, and if they live in a crowded house they must go on the street to receive their friends. They are thus practically forced on the streets for social life.
Among the economic conditions contributing to the social evil are the following: low wages, insanitary conditions, too long hours and high pressure of work; the over-crowding of houses upon lots; of families in the house, and of persons in single rooms.