“Murder in the
United States,” from the editorial page of the Arizona Republican, Dec. 28,
1916
Startling not
because of their novelty, but because of a serious condition of affairs which
they reveal, are the statistics compiled by Henry A. Forster, a New York
lawyer, which he used in an address in New York before the Society of Medical
Jurisprudence, to show that the United States leads the world among civilized
nations, in the number of homicides committed annually, while the number of
convictions is in proportion very much smaller. The number of executions was
only 119. The murder rate in the United States for the period of 1909-1913 was
6.4 per 100,000 of population. The murder rate in England and Wales for the
same period was 0.8 and for Italy 3.6. It is a notorious fact that the murder
rate is higher in the United States than it is even in Canada, and that the
percentage of convictions is lower. Lynchings, which are of such frequent
occurrence in the United States, and the number of which in the 10 years ending
with 1903 was 3,337, are unknown elsewhere in the civilized world except in
remote regions of Russia. Human life is held in lighter esteem here than in
other civilized nations, and the law more often proves inadequate for the punishment
of capital crimes.
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