Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
A tale of three counties: Homicide, race, and justice in the American West, 1880-1920
Abstract
Was the American West really violent? This question has been debated by historians for decades. Homicide, because it is an extraordinary form of criminal behavior, provides a natural beginning point to measure levels of lethal violence and assess the administration of justice in the American West. No other crime furnishes such heavy documentation in the form of coroner's inquests, court records, and newspaper coverage that present the researcher with a clear picture of how the justice system works. This study verifies that African American and Native American defendants have significantly higher conviction rates than whites. Homicide rates, much higher than those in eastern cities, such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, show the existence of a subculture of violence within African American society in Douglas County, Nebraska, and the presence of a regional culture of violence within Las Animas County, Colorado, and Gila County, Arizona. Finally, this dissertation demonstrates the weakness of using indictment or information data as a measure of lethal violence. On the county level, when used with other documentation, coroner's inquests provide the best method (accused/ratio) for evaluating historical bias within the criminal justice system.
Subject Area
American history|Criminology
Recommended Citation
McKanna, Clare V., "A tale of three counties: Homicide, race, and justice in the American West, 1880-1920" (1993). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9333976.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9333976