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Notes
Throughout this chapter, the basis of induction is the number of prisoners received at different institutions andnot the prison population at particular times. This avoids the mistakes and distortions of the latter method. (Cf. Falkner: “Crime and the Census;” Publications of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, No. 190). Many writers on crime among Negroes (e.g., EL. Hoffman, and all who use the Eleventh Census uncritically) have fallen into numerous mistakes and exaggerations by carelessness on this point.
Pennsylvania Colonial Records, I, 380-91.
See Chapter III and Appendix B.
Cf. “Pennsylvania Statutes at Large,” Ch. 36.
“Watson’s Annals,” I. 62.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 62–63.
“Pennsylvania Colonial Records,” II, 275; IX, 6; “Watson’s Annals,” I, 309.
Cf. Chapter IV.
Average length of sentences for whites in Eastern Penitentiary during nineteen years, 2 years 8 months 2 days; for Negroes, 3 years 7 months 14 days. Cf. “Health of Convicts” (pam.), pp. 7,8.
Ibid., “Condition of Negroes,” 1838, pp. 15-18; “Condition of Negroes,” 1848, pp. 26, 27.
“Condition of Negroes,” 1849, pp. 28, 29. “Condition of Negroes” 1838, pp. 15-18.
“The large proportion of colored men who, in April, had been before the criminal court, led Judge Gordon to make a suggestion when he yesterday discharged the jurors for the term. ‘It would certainly seem,’ said the Court, ‘that the philanthropic colored people of the community, of whom there are a great many excellent and intelligent citizens sincerely interested in the welfare of their race, ought to see what is radically wrong that produces this state of affairs and correct it, if possible. There is nothing in history that indicates that the colored race has a propensity to acts of violent crime; on the contrary, their tendencies are most gentle, and they submit with grace to subordination.’” PhiladelphiaRecord, April 29, 1893: Cf.Record, May 10 and 12;Ledger, May 10, andTimes, May 22, 1893.
Cf. Chapters IV and VII.
Cf. Section 49.
Additional information
This article is excerpted from W.E.B. Du Bois’sThe Philadelphia Negro, which was originally published in 1899 for the University of Pennsylvania. These excerpts are from an edition published by Kraus-Thomson Organization Limited, Millwood, N.Y. in 1973. Material in the public domain.
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Bois, W.E.B.D. The Negro criminal. Rev Black Polit Econ 16, 17–31 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02900920
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02900920