CHAPTER X 
THE RELATION OF ORIGINS AND NATIVITY TO CRIME 
NATIVITY AND CONVICTIONS FOR INDICTABLE OFFENCES 
Indictable offences include serious breaches of the law. During the past few years 
convictions in Canada for such offences have fluctuated between 15,000 and 19,000 per 
annum. Of those, not more than 1,000 each year have resulted in penitentiary sentences, 
the number in Canadian penitentiaries at any given time being between 2,200 and 2,700. In 
addition to indictable offences there are misdemeanours of juveniles with which the juvenile 
courts deal and for which reformatory sentences are frequently given. The total convic- 
tions of juveniles on both major and minor charges number between 8,000 and 9000 yearly 
and the population of reformatories is usually about 2,500. The great majority of illegal 
acts, however, are committed by adults and are of a minor nature, coming in the “mnon- 
indictable ” class. They are dealt with by police magistrates and justices of the peace, 
and the number of summary convictions handed down each year ranges between 130,000 
and 150,000, which is many times in excess of the number of other classes of convictions. 
A study of the different nativity and ‘origin’ groups from the point of view of respect 
for law is, of necessity, confined to the section of the population convieted of indictable 
offences, and to the inmates of reformatories and penitentiaries. Data as to birthplace 
and origin are not available for the large group of adults summarily convicted in police 
courts nor for juvenile delinquents who escape a reformatory sentence. The birthplace of 
those convicted of indictable offences, however, is recorded, and a complete analysis of 
census data dealing with the reformatory and penitentiary population has been made. Such 
data include only the more serious offenders both among juveniles and adults, but though 
such offenders are much fewer than adults convicted of minor infringements of the law, 
they constitute a much more satisfactory basis for the. study of criminal tendencies as 
exhibited by the various sections of a population. 
Reference has already been made to thie importance of age and sex distribution as 
factors in explaining differences in social behaviour. Such factors are especially important 
in comparisons between groups of a population in respect of criminality. As will be shown 
in the analysis of penitentiary population, crime is much mofe frequent among males than 
females, and occurs most frequently among young men. Consequently, when a section of 
the population is characterized by an abnormally large proportion of males below the age 
of thirty, a higher crime rate is to be expected. The significance of this fact in connection 
with immigration has been suggested in a previous chapter. Other things being equal, the 
normal expectation is for a larger proportion of criminals among immigrants, and especially 
among recent immigrants, because a migrating population ordinarily includes a dispropor- 
lionately large number of males in the prime of life. Immigration, thus, may tend to 
raise the crime rate in a country, merely because of age and sex distribution favourable 
to crime. 
In this connection, attention is again called to the fact that, other things being equal, 
the most desirable immigration is that in which the sexes are most nearly equal and among 
which the largest proportion takes up permanent residence in this country; the least desirable 
being that which is characterized by a large floating surplus of young unattached men 
who spend a few years here and then return to their native land or go to some other pars 
of the world. Table 35, Chapter III, shows the countries which have sent to Canada the 
largest proportions of males, and in the discussion on the extent and speed of naturalization 
certain inferences were made as to the differing proportions of immigrants from specified 
countries who contemplate permanent residence ijn Canada. Attention is again directed 
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