Stealing Cars: Rethinking Joyriders and Organized Crime in the Early 1920s

Sarah Seo, a law professor at the University of Iowa, contacted me a few days ago about a source that I had cited in Rebecca and my 2014 book. It is Annual Report: Automobile Protective and Information Bureau, 1920-1921, and may be the only extent copy.  I found it in a box of historical; documents at the National Insurance Crime Bureau's (NCIB) office in Chicago back in 2013. After copying the document for Sarah, I looked at it again. Some pretty good material in this document, including reference to North Dakota Bootleggers and stolen cars near the Canadian border. This was also a problem in Michigan, and I mentioned it in the book.

What struck me this  time around was the extremely low recovery rates of stolen cars during 1920-21.   This data is broken down by state,  and the recovery rate is uniformly low. The totals for October to October 1920-21 are 7431 reported stolen, 2099 recovered.  This is low, and is reflective of organized crime activity more than joyriders taking cars for a spin.  But the literature of the decade of the 1920s overwhelmingly centers on joyriders! So what do we make of it? Was this a misreading of the auto theft problem on the part of law enforcement, or a deliberate distortion? Did the government not want to publicize the widespread problem of organized crime, but tried to remedy it with the Dyer Act, that made it a federal crime to transport stolen vehicles across state lines. Just thinking!