ORIGINS AND BIRTHPLACES OF PENITENTIARY POPULATION 187
ORIGINS AND BIRTHPLACES OF PENITENTIARY POPULATION

Introduction—Those committed to penitentiaries include only such as have been convicted
 of serious offences against the criminal code. Consequently, penitentiary statistics
do not entirely reflect criminality as between different groups in a population. Breaches of
the law might be of considerable frequency in a community and the proportions in penitentiaries
 be small, because members of that community very rarely committed crimes of
a serious nature. Further, certain people may be clever enough to work within the letter
of the law, yet pursue predatory occupations which are as criminal in intent and as serious
in their effects on society as those so-called major offences which result in the commitment
 of others to penitentiaries. Besides, those in penitentiaries at a given time include
many who have been there for ten, fifteen, twenty or more years, so that changes in the
composition of that group do not reflect changing tendencies in crime as quickly as data
covering the actual admissions in various periods. Yet, while the composition of the penitentiary
 population at any given date is not an entirely satisfactory index of criminal
propensity among the various sections of our population, the census of penitentiary population
 nevertheless throws much light on the tendency to crime.
It is possible, as has been pointed out, that in certain nativity and ‘origin’ groups,
major offences are rare while minor offences are unusually common, so that the number in
penitentiaries is comparatively small in spite of a very general disregard for the law. On
the other hand, it is very improbable that in a group where major offences are frequent,
one would find respect for the law in less importint matters. The conclusion seems
warranted, then, that where large numbers of a given group are found in our penitentiaries
there is probably a very general disregard for law, and many minor offences are committed
While normally the converse would seem to apply, namely, that where there are few
convictions for major offences the group is generally quite law abiding, there are nevertheless
 sections of the community in which minor offences are very frequent and major
offences rare. The conditions in such sections of the population are not reflected in penitentiary
 data. However, it may be assumed in most cases where the penitentiary rate is
high that minor crimes are also comparatively frequent, and if the converse assumption
cannot be made in all cases, the penitentiary data, by furnishing a more or less accurate
index of the frequency of major offences, draw attention to those groups whose general
behaviour is bad. Thus the data presented in this section may properly be regarded as
giving proof of certain important differences between various nativity and ‘origin’ groups
in our population, in respect not only of major offences against society but also of conduct
in general.
On June 1, 1921, there were 2.282 prisoners distributed as follows in the six peniten-Harries
 of Canada ‘—

Dorchester, NB.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
St. Vincent de Paul, Que.. .. .. .. .. ..
Kingston, Ont.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Stony Mountain, Man.. .. .. .. .. .. ..
Prince Albert, Sask.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
New Westminster, BC.. .. .. .. . .. .... .. _.
It is with the population as listed above at the date of the last census that this study deals.
While the number is not great, at least it is sufficiently large to warrant such broad
generalizations as are made below, and where very small numbers occur in the analysis,
the actual figures are inserted as well as the rates per 100,000, so that the size of -the
sample on which the conclusions are based may be known to the reader, and due allowances
made. The rates shown in the following tables are correct to the first whole number
throughout. While they have been computed to the second decimal place in the work
tables, such detail is not warranted by the size of the population under review, and its
inclusion would merely make the tables more difScult to read

Male
340
573
767
206
193
185

Female

13