Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1998
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 1998, pp. 348-49
Abstract
Clare McKanna concludes in Homicide, Race, and Justice in the American West that based on homicide statistics the West was more violent than the East. As defined by coroners, "homicide" means any killing of one human being by another not clearly identified as accidental. For comparative purposes, McKanna has rigorously and meticulously researched homicide records for what he considers three representative counties: urban Douglas, of which Omaha is the county seat, in Nebraska, and the rural mining counties of Las Animas in Colorado and Gila in Arizona.
Western homicides occurred for a wide variety of reasons, ranging all the way from domestic disputes to lynchings. A frequent cause involved crimes committed by males under the influence of alcohol in saloons. Particularly vulnerable as both perpetrators and victims were African-Americans in Douglas County, immigrants in Las Animas County, and Apaches and Hispanics in Gila County. Not surprisingly, the legal system came down hard on minority perpetrators.
Comments
Copyright 1998 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln