"It Is His First Offense. We Might As Well Let Him Go": Homicide and Criminal Justice in Chicago, 1875-1920

At the start of the twentieth century, political and legal reformers initiated far-ranging changes in the American criminal justice system, particularly in cities such as Chicago, where violent crime rates were high and where the Progressive movement was especially influential. Yet law enforcers rarely convicted killers, more than three-fourths of whom went unpunished. Even in homicide cases in which the identity of killers was certain and the police made arrests, jurors typically exonerated or acquitted killers. Using police and court records and tracing the legal outcomes of nearly six thousand cases, this essay analyzes patterns of conviction in Chicago homicide cases between 1875 and 1920 and argues that a blend of gender-, race-, and class-based notions of justice trumped the rule of law, producing low homicide conviction rates during a period of soaring violence.