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39 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 480 (1948-1949)
Poverty, Race and Crime

handle is hein.journals/jclc39 and id is 492 raw text is: POVERTY, RACE AND CRIME James Edward McKeown The author has been admitted to Ph. D. candidacy in Sociology at the University of Chicago. He was formerly an instructor in the social sciences at St. Francis Xavier College for Women in Chicago and is now Assistant Professor of Sociology at New Mexico Highlands University. His articles on social science education have appeared in the American Catholic Sociological Review, and the Midwest Socologist.-EDIToR. Criminologists have generally concluded that poverty and slum conditions are positively associated with criminality, that the foreign born and their children are less involved in crim- inality than the children of native born, and that Negroes are more involved than whites.' These conclusions, however, relate to the crimes of tile proletariat, such as, rape, murder, robbery, assault, burglary, and larceny, rather than to the white collar crimes. The conclusions of criminologists, like those of othel social scientists, are highly tentative in character. It is desirable to test them in various ways from time to time to see how well they are holding up. The correlations presented in this paper are intended as such a test. In this study American cities showing populations greater than 100,000 in 1940 have been divided into two groups: Group A: Fifty-five cities with populations 100,000 to 250,000 Group B: Thirty-six cities with populations over 250,000.2 Among the cities in each of these groups the 1939 rates for murder, robbery, assault, burglary, and larceny have been corre- lated respectively with fifteen 1939-1940 indices of socio-eco- nomic conditions.3 The batteries containing the highest coeffi- cients are presented here. A few correlations between 1930 crime rates and 1930 socio-economic indices are also presented. In Table I the five 1939 crime rates are correlated respec- tively with three indices of community economic prosperity. All but one of the resulting coefficients are negative, and that one 1 Edwin H. Sutherland, Principles of Criminology, 3rd ed., N. Y.; J. B. Lippincott Co., 1939, pp. 120, 124-126, 176, 178-179. Donald R. Taft, Criminology, N. Y.; Macmil- lan Co., 1942, pp. 91, 105-106, 114, 133, 228-229. See other criminology texts also. 2 Jersey City, N. J., is not included in this study because its 1939 crime data is incomplete. 3 The crime rates have been derived from the F.B.I. Uniform Crime Beports. One socio-economic index on property valuations and another on cost of city governments were derived from figures in the 1940 World Almanac. The remaining thirteen socio- economic indices have been taken from the 1940 Census. 4R0

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