Less Crime, More Punishment: Violence, Race, and Criminal Justice in Early Twentieth-Century America

Abstract

At first glance, this story seems familiar, if baffling. Patterns of crime and punishment in the United States moved in opposite directions, disrupting social life, distorting political institutions, and roiling race relations. Violent crime surged, and rates of murder and robbery exploded, particularly in large cities, for a quarter century. Criminals seemed more vicious than ever. Unable to respond to the crisis, the American legal system appeared weak and ineffective. Feckless, corrupt policemen proved no match for a new breed of criminal, while gullible jurors, indifferent prosecutors, and clever defense attorneys who exploited legal technicalities rendered the criminal justice system toothless, leaving the public in peril. With few offenders apprehended, let alone convicted, the prison population remained small, and executions were rare, despite the explosion in crime. But then both trends reversed. Rates of violent crime plummeted, falling to their lowest levels in decades. Like the earlier rise in crime, the drop in violence was most precipitous in the nation’s major urban centers, although murder, assault, and robbery fell nearly everywhere. Notwithstanding this plunge in serious crime, legislators embarked on a far-reaching law-and-order crusade. They passed draconian laws, closed legal loopholes, initiated a massive prison-building program, limited the power of juries, and expanded federal law enforcement, all in a frantic “war on crime.” At both the local and the national levels, opportunistic politicians seized on the crime panic, manipulating fears of street crime to secure office and expand government power. Conviction rates soared and prison populations skyrocketed, even as crime levels plunged. While the rate of capital crime decreased, the rate of executions increased. At the same time, law and order became racialized, and conviction and incarceration rates for African Americans jumped disproportionately. Legislative reforms and law enforcement strategies that would have previously encountered fierce political opposition enjoyed popular support when cast as crucial weapons in a war on crime—and when implicitly framed in terms of protecting respectable white citizens from African American “predators.” The mismatch between patterns of crime and punishment has commanded particular attention from historians, including many of the contributors to this special issue. This disjuncture, however, occurred not during the closing decades of the twentieth century; rath-