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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Potentially, the most complete and accurate information concerning any broad class of law-violators is obtainable from statistics on inmates of penitentiaries. This is true because the longer term of the penitentiary convict makes possible a correspondingly more intensive study of his characteristics than can be made for the offender concerning whom we have only the information provided by the police, the courts, or the municipal jails.
The research upon which this report is based grew out of an interest in evaluating, at least partially, the extent to which one major recommendation of the so-called “Archambault Report” has been implemented. The pertinent recommendation stressed “the need for formulating definite policies in regard to the compilation of statistics and definite principles of gathering such statistics which would be observed by all authorities throughout Canada.” More concretely, it recommended (p. 174) that “there should be a close cooperation between the [Department of Justice, Penitentiaries Branch] … and the [Dominion] Bureau of Statistics, with a view to formulating definite policies….” The major statistical section (forming the Appendix) of the Annual Report of the Commissioners of Penitentiaries, is a direct result of the foregoing recommendation.
The writer wishes to acknowledge the grant-in-aid of this research given by the Canadian Social Science Research Council last year while he was a member of the staff of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at McGill University.
1 For the report of a study which complements the aim of the present one, see Howard Roseborough, “Preliminary Survey of Criminal Statistics and Crime in Canada,” unpublished manuscript (copy in possession of the Canadian Social Science Research Council).
2 Royal Commission to Investigate the Penal System of Canada, Report (Ottawa, 1938).Google Scholar
3 Hereinafter to be referred to as the Annual Report.
4 For example, the relationships between (a) amount of time served, or the granting of ticket-of-leave, and (b) age, sex, nativity, ethnicity, nature of offence, etc.
5 It was felt that the small increment of knowledge to be expected from visits to additional penitentiaries would not warrant the time and expense involved.
6 For the purposes of the present study, it was deemed sufficient to give close attention to only the most recent available Annual Report (1950).
7 Broken down into separate tables for males admitted, males discharged, females admitted, females discharged, and males under twenty-one years of age admitted.
8 The information obtained through the interview is complemented by information from the Commitment Warrant, a Newcomer's Questions form (P.B.108), a medical report, and a routine check with the R.C.M.P.
9 Use of these standardized “individual cards” throughout the penitentiary system is intended to make for uniformity in the data collected. This purpose is, in general, accomplished fairly well; but, as we shall see, a certain amount of unanticipated variability creeps into a few items of information.
10 In order to facilitate examination, at one point in the interview, for identifying scars or other marks.
11 It goes without saying, of course, that this matter of “incentives” requires further study, entailing an attempt to get at the convict's “definitions of the situation” as regards the interview in general and various items of information in particular.
12 “Records of Penal and Correctional Institutions and Statistics on Prisoners”; in Reckless, W. C., The Etiology of Delinquent, and Criminal Behavior (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1943). The writer is greatly indebted to this article for many of the ideas presented in this report, especially in this section.Google Scholar
13 This item suggests that at least some of the errors to be found in the penitentiary statistics may be random and compensating, rather than systematic in character. See Sutherland, E. H. and Vechten, C. C. Van, “The Reliability of Criminal Statistics,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, XXV, 05–June, 1934, pp. 10–20. The extent to which this is true could be investigated by means of a special rigorous endeavour to obtain reliable, checked information for a sample of convicts on whom the information has already been collected by means of the usual procedure.Google Scholar
14 One interviewee informed the writer that a “spot” check of the files of recidivists had proved to him that the information on “age on admission” is highly unreliable.
15 Incidentally, another incentive that may conceivably affect this item operates on the recorder. A brief supplementary form must be filled in for all immigrants by the recorder, giving information on port of entry, date of entry, etc. The prospect of this additional chore, small though it be, may induce the recorder—perhaps unconsciously—to phrase his question, hopefully, as one habitually did: “Were you born in Canada?”
16 “Records of Penal and Correctional Institutions and Statistics on Prisoners.”
17 Occasionally, according to a penitentiary officer, a convict who has had a tiff with his chaplain will “change” his religion, claiming to have falsified the information originally.
18 Still, it is unlikely that the proportion of falsifications would be statistically significant.
19 A penitentiary officer pointed out that an occasional young convict will claim drug addiction in order to avoid committal to Collins Bay Penitentiary (for young offenders) which does not admit drug addicts.
20 “Juvenile” is variously defined by the provinces, referring to those under sixteen years of age in certain provinces and under eighteen in others.
21 Chiefly because co-operation from local authorities is not complete.
22 Circular Letter No. 113/1936, Office of Superintendent of Penitentiaries, Ottawa Sept. 2, 1936.
23 A penitentiary officer stated that, in his penitentiary, a few schizoid and schizophrenic convicts have been mistakenly considered subnormal.
24 Also dealt with previously, in connection with incentives to falsification.
25 Or to any other item, for that matter.
26 It is appropriate, at this point, to indicate another interference with the uniformity of the data. This is caused by the fact that responsibility for obtaining and recording the data is not given to any single individual at either penitentiary. Although the Clerk to the Chief Keeper usually has the primary responsibility for this task, the press of other duties frequently necessitates having some other clerk handle the interviews. The resulting increased variability in the interpretation of items and in the phrasing of questions can only be guessed at.
27 Also dealt with previously, in connection with incentives to falsification.
28 As indicated, for example, by the number of infractions of penitentiary rules or the number of occupations held within the penitentiary.
29 Falsification of information leads to loss of remission time in one of the two penitentiaries visited.
30 This statement is slightly less true with regard to administrative personnel of the Penitentiaries Branch.
31 This represents, incidentally, one of the most specific statements given by penitentiary personnel regarding the use of the official statistics. More usually, answers to this form of question ranged from frank avowals of ignorance to such general statements as: “The statistics tell us how many prisoners there are, and whether there is, or there's liable to be, overcrowding in any of the penitentiaries.”
32 The sociological literature of large-scale organizations (e.g., business and industrial organizations, military organizations, and bureaucracy in general) has become voluminous. Some of the better known works are by Max Weber, R. K. Merton, Chester Barnard, F. J. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, and Philip Selznick.
33 No change has ever been directed in the original data-gathering procedures instituted in 1936.
34 Not that the task of recording is without its urgency. As one recorder put it, “The Penitentiaries Branch wants the P.B.112A immediately after the prisoner is admitted to the penitentiary.”
35 Penitentiary classification officers are most likely to uncover, in pursuance of their routine duties, accurate verificatory information on prisoners. However, use of this information might have certain drawbacks. It is probable that the prisoner's knowledge that such information is being relayed to other offices would disturb the quasi-intimate, permissive relationship that many classification officers consider essential to their work with prisoners.
36 Penitentiaries in the United States and in a few other countries normally include in their personnel a “statistician” or a “sociologist” whose duties are roughly similar to those described.
