The American small town, indicted by Sinclair Lewis and strongly
resenting the indictment, finds another accusing finger pointing its way in a report issued by the Federal Department of Justice. An official analysis of commitments to penal institutions in the United States has been made to ascertain whether more crime is committed in large cities, small towns, or rural areas. And in the official tabulation, the small town comes out worst of all. The country does best, for on. the basis of the twenty thousand offences investigated, it is shown that the country provides less than a third of the crime traced to urban areas. The largest cities, with a population of 100,000 or more, however, have a markedly lower percentage of crime, in proportion to population, than the small towns with populations from 2,500 to 100,000. No explanation is attempted in the official report, but the small towns have no doubt at all as to what the explanation is. The greater per- centage of commitments from small towns, spokesmen for them say, simply indicates that the small towns are more efficient than the cities in bringing criminals to book.
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