The history of American criminal justice is, to say the least, by no means an overplowed field. In fact, it has gotten systematic attention only in recent years. The public, of course, is fascinated with crime and horrified by crime; stories about crime and criminal justice cry out from the pages of newspapers and dominate movies and television. Historical research is another matter.
The first half of the twentieth century should be a rich field for research. Records are available in abundance and in every county. Moreover, there are, particularly for the 1920s and 1930s, a fair number of state crime surveys and other empirical studies of criminal justice. California and the West, however, have been somewhat neglected. This article presents some data on one county, Santa Clara County, in one year, 1922, as a modest beginning.