Akers, Elmer R.

Fox, Vernon

English

Northwestern University Illinois, School of Law: Scholarly Commons

Journal of Criminal Law and CriminologyVolume 35 | Issue 2 Article 51944The Detroit Rioters and Looters Committed toPrisonElmer R. AkersVernon FoxFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclcPart of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and CriminalJustice CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons.Recommended CitationElmer R. Akers, Vernon Fox, The Detroit Rioters and Looters Committed to Prison, 35 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 105 (1944-1945)THE DETROIT RIOTERS AND LOOTERS COMMITTEDTO PRISONElmer R. Akers and Vernon FoxThe authors of this paper who are respectively, the Sociologist and Psy-chologist, on the staff of the Southern Michigan prison at Jackson, are reportingthe results of their studies of the Detroit rioters who have been committed tothe State Prison. The riot itself appears to be not simply a symptom of racefeeling.-Editor.Race riots have occurred many times in the United States, butthe conviction and sentence to prison of a hundred and more ofthe participants is unprecedented in its volume. On March 9, 1944,we had received in the State Prison of Southern Michigan atJackson 105 of the defendants who had been tried on chargesgrowing out of the Detroit race riot of June 21-22, 1943. Othersare still being tried or are awaiting trial.Already there have been written several reams concerning therace riot in Detroit. Newspaper and magazine articles, editorials,pamphlets, surveys of opinion, reports of lawyers' and otherassociations, and reports by psychiatrists, police commissions, andvarious city officials have been published. Probably the most im-portant publication has been a small book by Alfred McClung Leeand Norman D. Humphrey of Wayne University." This volumecontains a rather objective journalistic report and sociologicalinterpretation of the riot.The present article is concerned, not with the Detroit race riotitself, but with that group of men convicted of felonies and in-carcerated in State Prison as a result of it. The investigators areinterested in the social and psychological background and equip-ment of the men that induced them to participate in activitiesconnected with mass race violence, and for which they were con-victed of felonies. As far as the writers can discover, this particu-lar phase has not heretofore been attacked.Method of ProcedureThe records of the State Prison of Southern Michigan wereused as the source of data. These records include with regard toeach man the Michigan State Police report, a copy of the Court'sIndeterminate Sentence Record, Probation Officer's report, edu-cational and psychological examinations, medical report, and asocial history. In some cases, these records are supplemented byletters from the man's relatives, former employers, from schoolshe has attended and from institutions both penal and eleemosynarywhich have had contact with the prisoner himself and with othermembers of his family.All of the men who were sentenced to prison for crimes directlyconnected with the Detroit race riot were studied and the records105AKERS AND FOXcompiled on them were the source of the data used in this paper.There were ninety-seven Negroes and eight white men in thegroup,1 a total of 105 cases. As will be pointed out in greaterdetail later in the paper, the majority of this group were notrioters as such, but looters and carriers of concealed weapons.Most of the actual rioters, the participants in acts of violence,were convicted on charges of assault and battery, disorderly con-duct, and/or other misdemeanors. These misdemeanants, or activerioters, were in the main sentenced to the Detroit House of Cor-rection for periods varying from thirty to ninety days. Althoughthere were thirteen perpetrators of violent crimes sent to prison,only three were actually charged with rioting. For purposes ofthis study, however, the group of men convicted for crimes directlyconnected with the riot are hereafter called the riot group.It was noted that each man in the riot group had. been triedand sentenced at Recorder's Court in Detroit. A control groupof ninety-seven Negroes and eight white men was selected atrandom from the men received at the State Prison of SouthernMichigan from Recorder's Court during the months of May andJune, 1943, immediately preceding the riot. Frequency distribu-tions were set up for the riot group and the control group on thebasis of age of offenders, intelligence quotient, nativity and lengthof residence in Michigan, grade placement in school as indicatedby individual results on the New Stanford Achievement Test,history of drug addiction, and venereal condition. Statisticalanalyses were made on each of these sets of distributions. Furtheranalyses were made of the riot group alone on the basis of indus-trial skill, marital status, previous criminal record, and the specificcrimes for which the men were convicted.NativityOnly fourteen of the riot group were born in the State ofMichigan, and but twenty-one of the control group were born inthis state. Thirteen of the rioters had lived in Michigan less thanone year, eleven less than two years, 14 had been in this statefrom three to four years, thirteen others had been here from fiveto 10 years, and 40 had been here 11 years or more. The statescontributing most heavily to the riot group were, in descendingorder of importance, the following:Georgia, 22; Alabama, 18; Michigan, 14; Tennessee, 11; Missis-sippi, 8; total of all other states, 32; grand total, 105.A statistical analysis indicated that there was no significant dif-ference between the riot and control groups as to whether themen were natives of Michigan or from other states. Most of themen in both the riot and control groups had come from other'A similar disproportion occurred in the Chicago race riot of 1919. See thereport of the Chicago Commission of Race Relations; The Negro in Chicago, 1922.DETROIT RIOTERSstates. The mean length of residence in Michigan of the non-native riot and control groups were 10.6 ! 0.9 and 12.0 __ 0.9respectively. A critical ratio of 0.3 indicates that no significantdifference exists between the two groups of men as to their lengthof residence in Michigan.Tabulation and analysis of members of the riot and controlgroups as to whether they were natives of southern states ornorthern states yielded rather interesting results. The Mason andDixon line was selected as a rough dividing line between thenorthern and southern states. The following table may be helpfulin visualizing the differences in nativity of the two groups:Riot Group Control GroupNativity Expected Observed Expected ObservedNatives ofNorthern States ....... 24 16 24 32Natives ofSouthern States ....... 81 89 81 73The chi-square test indicates that a difference exists that reachesthe one per cent level of significance. Therefore, a significantlylarger group of men in the riot group than would be expectedwere natives of the southern states.AgeThe mean age of the riot group was found to be 28.2 ±!_ 0.9,as compared with 26.7 ± 0.9 for the control group. A criticalratio of 3.6 between the distribution indicates that the riot groupis significantly older than the control group. Lee and Humphreyindicates that ". . . it is well to remember that those hurt andthose arrested were probably the less agile persons and, in mostcases therefore, not as young as those who got away".2 On theother hand, it is known that persons convicted of individualassaultive crimes, including sex assaults, are on the average sig-nificantly older than those convicted for all other crimes.3 Theinvestigators have no substantial evidence at this time to provethat a difference in age exists between participants in individualassault and in mob violence. The group that was imprisoned asa result of the riot were, as has been mentioned before, generallynot those who actually participated in assault, but the looters, andthose convicted of carrying concealed weapons. Burglary and con-cealed weapons have been found to be crimes of younger men.4It is not unexpected, then, to find that the group of men convictedof looting and weapons charges resulting from the riot are sig-nificantly younger than the control group.2Alfred McClung Lee and Norman Humphrey; Race Riot, 1943, p. 83.'Vernon Fox; "Intelligence, Race, and Age as Selective Factors in Crime,"1943, an unpublished report to Michigan's Director of Corrections, p. 18.'Ibid., p. 19-20.AKERS AND FOXIntelligenceThe mean intelligence quotient of the riot group is 81.0 _ 0.6.This is very significantly below the mean of intelligence quotientof 83.8 ± 0.8 of the control group, as is evidenced by the criticalratio of 7.3. Both groups are very significantly below the prisonpopulation mean of 87.7 ± 0.1. The intellectual classifications 5of the rioters and control group are as follows:Classification Riot Group Control GroupVery superior ..................... 0 0Superior .......................... 2 3Average .......................... 21 24Dull .............................. 23 29Borderline defective ................ 40 37Feebleminded ..................... 19 12Academic Grade PlacementAccording to the results of the New Stanford AchievementTest, Form D, the mean average grade placement of the riot groupwas 4.3 - 0.3. The mean average grade placement of the controlgroup was found to. be 5.2 ± 0.2. The critical ratio of 4.4 betweenthese distributions indicates that the riot group is significantlyinferior to the control group as to education.Venereal ConditionStatistical analysis indicates that the venereal condition ofthe members of the riot group was not significantly different fromthat of the control group. In this instance data was available foronly ninety-seven of the riot group and one hundred and four ofthe control group. The following table may be helpful in visual-izing the similarity between the two groups:Riot Group Control GroupVenereal Condition Expected Observed Expected ObservedNegative ........... 52.1 51 55.9 57History of Syphilis.. 10.6 14 11.4 8History of Gonorrhea 14.9 12 16.1 19Active Syphilis ...... 15.5 16 16.5 16Active Gonorrhea ... 3.9 4 4.1 497.0 97 104.0 104Thus, a little less than half the men in each group were lueticupon admission to prison, or had a history of venereal disease.Drug AddictionAlthough all the individuals of both groups denied addictionto drugs at this time, prison records indicate a history of drugaddiction in some cases. Four members of the riot group and fiveof the control group had a history of drug addiction on their5Classification of intelligence quotients according to Frank N. Freeman;Mental Tests, 1939, p. 103.DETROIT RIOTERSrecords. Here, of course, a significant difference does not exist.Further Description of Riot GroupOf the riot group, ninety-seven were vocationally unskilled.Eight could be called semi-skilled. There was not a skilled workerin the group. Twenty-nine of the men were unemployed at thetime of the riot, despite the fact that war industry at that timewas able to use all available manpower. Very few of these un-employed men had been out of work for more than a few days,a situation which suggests that the riot group represents an areaof society where a high motility of labor exists. Only fourteenmen had been on only one job during the year prior to the riot;as mentioned above, twenty-nine were unemployed at the timeof the riot; the remaining sixty-two had been on their jobs forperiods ranging from a few days to several months, but none hadbeen employed at one place for a year. Vocational instability ora high motility of unskilled labor was the rule.The marital status of the riot group is as follows:Common-law relationship, 41; single, 34; married by ceremony,19; separated, 8; divorced, 3.The high proportion of common-law relationships is not entirelyunexpected, since the larger proportion of the riot group aresouthern Negroes. This group of people includes a large numberwho have continued the more primitive conjugal union which wasgeneral in slavery days, but now may represent cultural lag.It is noteworthy that only twenty-seven of the riot group hadhad no previous police record. Twenty-three had had only jailrecords. Sixteen others had been convicted of felonies and hadbeen given probation or suspended sentences. Twenty-three hadserved prison terms; fifteen of this number had had but oneprevious incarceration, four had been imprisoned twice, three hadbeen sentenced three times previously, and one had had four pre-vious prison terms and is wanted by the Alabama State Peni-tentiary for escaping. Sixteen of the men with previous policerecords had also been subjected to juvenile institutionalization.Seventy-four per cent of the rioters, then, had previously beenin conflict with law-enforcing agencies.Earlier in this paper it was mentioned that the majority ofthe men convicted of felonies as a result of the Detroit race riotwere not rioters as such, but looters and carriers of concealedweapons. The crimes for which the men were sentenced, togetherwith the number of offenders in each category are as follows:Crime Number of MenEntering without breaking in the daytime ....... 38Carrying concealed weapons ................... 37Larceny from a store ......................... 16Felonious assault ............................ 4AKERS AND FOXRioting ..................................... 3Resisting arrest ............................. 2Larceny of an automobile ..................... 1Malicious destruction of property .............. 1Robbery armed .............................. 1Negligent homicide .......................... 1Manslaughter . ............................. 1Total .......................................... 105It will be noticed that thirteen of the crimes, including robberyarmed, may be considered violent ones. Ninety-two of the menwere convicted of relatively non-violent crimes, such as stealingsmall articles from a store or walking into it after the windowshad been broken by a prospective misdemeanant. Thirty-sevenwere convicted of carrying concealed weapons. Many of thesemen said they were convicted of carrying knives that theyhabitually carried, but for which they had never before beenarrested. At any rate, an unexpectedly small proportion of menwere imprisoned for actual and active rioting.SummaryIn summary, the following conclusions may be drawn withregard to the men who were imprisoned for felonies directly con-nected with the Detroit race riot:1. The men convicted of felonies as a result of the riot weredisproportionately from states south of the Mason and Dixon2. The mean age of the riot group was significantly older thanthe control group.3. The riot group was very significantly inferior to the con-trol group with regard to general intelligence.4. The riot group was educationally inferior to the control'group.5. There was no significant difference between the riot groupand control group with regard to venereal condition.6. No significant difference with regard to history of drugaddiction existed between the two groups.7. The riot group were in the main unskilled workers withhigh vocational motility.8. The riot group has a very high proportion of common-lawrelationships.9. Seventy-four per cent of the riot group had previously beenin conflict with the law-enforcing agencies. Twenty-three of thisnumber had prison records.10. Most of the men sentenced to prison for crimes directlyconnected with the riot were looters and carriers of concealedweapons, and not for active and violent participation in the riot.Only thirteen men were sentenced for violent crimes.

The Detroit Rioters and Looters Committed to Prison

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The Detroit Rioters and Looters Committed to Prison

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