Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/689

 STUDY OF WOMEN CRIMINALS 6/3

the paupers, who are usually old women, many of whom become intoxicated so they can be sentenced to the workhouse as a place of shelter. The penitentiary inmates are younger. This must necessarily be true, as their crimes require better vitality, more accurate thought, and quicker execution. Where I had an oppor- tunity to learn the true age, I found the ages given me were always younger.

Records of institutions place stress upon nationality and upon religion. These seem of negative value as compared with some other facts. These records give the nationality, but whether foreign-born or where the parents were born is not stated. I found nationality to vary much with the locality ; and often, when tra- cing the line of descent, a half-dozen distinct nationalities were found. Few claimed " American," though the majority were American-born. The census shows that a greater percentage of women than of men are foreign-born, but my results included only one city where the influence of migration was great. Results in nationality, in order to be representative, must be extensive, and in ratio to the population of the nationality represented by the criminal class. Thus 24 Irish criminals out of a population of 100 Irish in a community would be a startling fact, but out of 5,000, scarcely noteworthy. I consider the results of this obser- vation of negative value in social study, unless the nativity of the parents, and the time spent by parents and criminals in America, are known. The social forces and their effect upon them are otherwise unascertainable.

The first objection to deductions from statistics upon religion is that it is closely related to nationality. Thus in an Irish or German community from which the criminal class comes the Catholic would predominate, and the rash deduction would be that more Catholics than Protestants were criminal. It is true, some religions represent a broader, more cultural plane, and where nationality can be eliminated statistics would prove valuable. What I did find of interest as bearing upon the cultural and edu- cational side of the problem was the denominations represented in the Protestant religion. Thus out of 29 who claimed the Protes- tant religion 11 were Methodists, 7 Baptists, 5 Presbyterians,