Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1910 — CRIME STATISTICS APPALLING. [ARTICLE]

CRIME STATISTICS APPALLING.

Conviction, for Homicide Here Confra.ted with Those in Germany. In Germany, with a population ot about 50,000,000, the homicides reported in 1903 were 322. In the United States, with about 80,000,000 population, the homicides in the same year numbered 9,000, about thirty times as many, Charles B. Brewer says in McClure’s. The World Almanac reports that in 1895 (no record for 1903) the convictions in Germany numbered 95 per cent; in the United States 1.3 per cefit. These figures, reduced to population, would give Germany one unconvicted person at liberty for each 3,000,000 of population—would give the United States one for each 9,000. Do you think the percentages on which these figures are based wild exaggwgations? Are they productions of some “yellow” sheet seeking to supply a thrill? Or have they foundation Inj fact? Let us see: Figures were given in the early paragraphs of his article from official reports of 1908 crediting St. Louis with a ratio of legal executions for homicides committed of 1.1 per cent, and Chicago with .6 per cent. The record in this latter city is 2,113 homicides in 29 years, with 38 legal executions resulting—1.3 per cent. From the American Law Review article previously referred to is deduced the following: For 720 homicides in Connecticut, from 1897 to 19£)6, there resulted nine legal executions (1.3 per cent); for 2,500 in Colorado, from 1889 to 1897, there resulted 12 legal executions (5-percentJ; for 6,600 in Ohio, from 1884 to 1906, there resulted 52 (again .5 per cent); and for 8,800 in New York, from 1889, the year the electric Chair was instituted, to 1905, there were 88 legal executions, 1.1 per cent. And sometimes a girl thinks she has lost her heart when it is only her appetite. At this stage of the game the hog pen is mightier than the sword.