CONTENT ANALYSISProbably more restrictions are placed on the man with color than on the man with crime. When crime and color converge, the person is in double jeopardy. Many people strongly associate the two factors and begin to see color as sufficient reason for suspecting crime.All men belong to the same species bat, as the only ethnic group in America ever subjected to slavery, Negroes have been given a particular legal and social status. Until recently, Negroes had no voice in defining acts declared offensive to the social order. The status of being Negro still carries a vulnerability to being labeled criminal which does not equally apply to the status of being white.There are variations of crime over time and place. Each state jurisdiction in the U. S. has its own penal code. The decision that someone has committed a crime may depend on police policy, referral practices, and treatment resources. Enforcement procedures depend on circumstance, social class, time and place. The person who escapes detection and arrest also escapes a social stigma not readily overcome.Negro adult crime and juvenile delinquency rates, measured by arrests, are higher than the white rates. Negroes have much higher rates of conviction and imprisonment. Convictions of Negroes come to three to four times their proportion in the population. Because the Negro arrest rate is much higher for crime against the person, the likelihood that the offender's race will be known is higher among the offenses Negroes are more likely to commit.Criminal homicide, like most other assaultive offences, is predominantly an uitragroup, intraracial act. In a study of homicides in Philadelphia (1946–1952), in 94 percent of the identified relationships, the victim and offender were members of the same race. The amount and the relative frequency of interracial homicide vary slightly in different parts of the country but usually indicate that more whites slay Negroes than vice versa. Like homicide, rape is overwhelmingly intraracial and intragroup. The danger to white women is as minimal as to Negro women.A legal system theoretically designed to provide uniform or equal treatment of suspects and defendants has faltered. Even if there were no race bias in the administration of justice, the social and economic class system would itself carry a burden of blame for the lack of uniformity of treatment.Sellin's review of national prisoner statistics for 1931–1932 showed that Negroes received a lower average sentence in "definite sentence" states, mostly Southern, for homicide, robbery, assault, forgery, larceny, and liquor violation, but higher for rape, other sex offenses, and burglary. In states with the indeterminate sentence, Negroes had longer sentences than whites for all major offenses. Negroes also had more commitments to prison and served more actual time before release from state penal institutions.Proportionately about 10 to 14 percent more whites than Negroes are annually "released conditionally." Over time and in different states, between 10 and 20 percent more Negroes than whites are executed.When fewer police officers are assigned to highly populated Negro neighborhoods, less crime by Negroes may be recorded than actually occurs. But Negro victims often are not receiving equal protection under the law.When white deliquents and nondelinquents are compared, differences in their backgrounds are similar to those observed when Negro delinquents are compared with Negro nondelinquents. With greater exposure to deleterious conditions, it would not be surprising if Negroes displayed a higher crime rate; but there is every reason to believe that, under comparable circumstances, the Negro crime rate would not be substantially different from the white rate. Tables. References.An examination of the meaning of race, the meaning of crime and criminal statistics, and the ways in which race and crime converge. CONSONANT... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]