The Merriam report similarly said:
The pressure of economic conditions has an enormous influence in producing certain types of crime. Unsanitary housing and working conditions, unemployment, wages inadequate to maintain a human standard of living, inevitably produce the crushed or distorted bodies and minds from which the army of crime is recruited. The crime problem is not merely a question of police and courts; it leads to the broader problem of public sanitation, education, home care, living wages and industrial democracy.
The greater liability of Negroes to unemployment introduces another factor. A plant official told the Commission that his plant had dismissed more than 500 Negro girls for business reasons. These girls, it was stated, could not easily find re-employment and were therefore probably exposed to certain necessities and temptations from which white girls of comparable status are exempt.
Ratio of convictions to arrest.—Police statistics of the relation of convictions to arrests do not involve the question of faulty source and bias and can therefore be used. They show that Negro defendants are more frequently convicted than whites, and this difference is even more pronounced in the more serious crimes. This excess ranged from 3 to 8 per cent during the period 1914-19.
The Negro and sex crimes.—Examination of the records of sex offenders brought into the criminal court in the two-year period 1917-18 showed a total of 253, of whom thirty-two, or 12.6 per cent, were Negroes. This was lower than the Negro rate, according to police statistics, for felonies in general. The sex offenses of Negroes were committed for the most part only against Negroes, and the specific charges were rape, attempted rape, accessory to rape, crimes against children, indecent liberties, contributing to delinquency, incest, adultery, murder by abortion, bigamy, crimes against nature, seduction, and bastardy. Of crimes against children two out of forty-six were committed by Negroes, or about 5 per cent, substantially the proportion of Negroes to the total population. The figures, however, are not a reliable index either for white or Negro crime because they include only cases passing through the social-service department of the criminal court.
IV. THE NEGRO IN THE COURTS
During the Commission's inquiry an effort was made to ascertain conditions in some of the various courts into which Negroes are brought; to learn the comparative attitudes of judges, prosecutors, and policemen toward Negro and white offenders, and to learn some of the pertinent facts in the social history of Negroes brought into these courts.
In all, 703 cases were studied, 538 white and 165 Negro. The social histories showed a conspicuous lack of schooling in the Negroes arrested, more than half of whom had left school before reaching the age of twelve. This is two years below the minimum age for children in Illinois. Only eight had gone beyond the fifth grade. More than 76 per cent were engaged in unskilled work, and more than 70 per cent had incomes of less than $25 a week. Few were property owners. More than 50 per cent were locked up because of inability to furnish bonds.
Compared with white prisoners there was little difference in economic class, ability to provide bonds, or legal representation. There was some noticeable difference in the character of offenders, varying with the type of neighborhood, but no general comparisons were possible because the courts were selected in a manner to get the greatest number of Negro cases.
While judges in most courts treated Negro defendants as considerately as they did whites, conditions in other courts were quite different. One judge frequently assumed an attitude of facetiousness while hearing Negro cases. The hearings were characterized by levity and lack of dignity. In one instance the judge was shaking dice during the hearing of the case.