Recent Statistics Relating to Crime in Chicago

Abstract

Statistics are now available that make possible a fairly complete summary of the facts relating to crime in Chicago during the past five years.2 Such a summary has not been published since the Merriam Crime Committee issued its report in the spring of 1915,3 and the following study is, therefore, an attempt to bring the statistical part of the Merriam report down to the present day. Unfortunately, there is neither in the City of Chicago nor in the State of Illinois a central bureau of criminal statistics through which statistics from the police department, the courts, the probation department, the jail, the House of Correction, and the state prisons, are collected and correlated. It is true that a state bureau of criminal statistics does exist on our statute books; for by a law approved June 11, 1912, the State Charities Commission was directed to establish such a bureau with the secretary of the commission as director in charge. This proposed bureau was charged with the duty of collecting and publishing annually the statistics of Illinois relating to crime; and all courts of Illinois, police magistrates, justices of the peace, clerks of all courts of record, sheriffs, keepers of all places of detention for crime or misdemeanors or violations of the criminal statutes are to