The Law: Law-Abiding Mississippi

Mississippi’s proudest boast these days is that no other state has a lower crime rate. It is based on the FBI’s recently published Crime in the United States, which shows that in 1963 Mississippi had only 393.2 major crimes per 100,000 people, far below the 472.9 of similarly rural North Dakota, the second-best state, and the 2,990.1 of Nevada, the state with the nation’s worst statistical crime rate.

The FBI report, however, is based entirely on figures supplied by local police. Last year’s Mississippi police reports covered only 66.6% of the state’s metropolitan population (towns of more than 25,000 people), only 71% of its small-town population (towns of less than 25,000), and only 28.2% of its countryside population—in a state with well over half its 2,290,000 people living in rural areas.

A less obvious but no less certain omission stems from the old Mississippi custom of largely ignoring crimes among Negroes, who comprise 45% of the population. As for white crimes against Negroes, Justice Department officials suggest that in a land of white-elected white sheriffs not many of the crimes are going to get into the record books. By informal department accounting, virtually no charges have been brought against anyone in civil rights crimes in Mississippi. The department knows of at least 19 church burnings, numerous floggings, 100 incidents involving violence, and at least eleven killings of Negroes this year that appear to be racial killings. If there have been arrests, the department is not aware of them.