﻿Edmondson: Juvenile Delinquency and Adult Crime 37 



numbers than those of native born white parentage. 4 It is also 

 true that in juvenile delinquency and in both major and minor 

 offenses in adult crime 5 the colored show higher proportional 

 numbers than the native born whites. 6 



That is, when the foreign born, the colored, and the native 

 born whites are reduced to the same ag3 basis, their comparison 

 still shows that in juvenile delinquency and petty adult crime 

 the foreign born and the colored show higher proportions relative 

 to their representation in the general population than the native 

 born; that in major offenses the native born whites show higher 

 relative proportions than the foreign born, and the colored higher 

 relative proportions than the native born whites. 



Koren's suggested specific explanation of this unfavorable 

 showing of the immigrants in juvenile delinquency and petty 

 adult crime — namely, the concentration of the foreign born in 

 urban communities where minor offenses are more severely 

 punished — is but a part of a more general and more complex 

 explanation. The fact that the immigrant and the colored con- 

 tribute an undue proportion to juvenile delinquency and petty 

 adult crime is not only true for the United States as a whole, 

 including both urban and rural communities, but will also be 

 found to hold true in the limits of a single urban community 

 where immigrants, colored, and native born live side by side. 

 The relation of these groups to juvenile delinquency and adult 

 crime may still be said to be determined by "concentration in 

 an urban community". But this determinant must be expanded 

 into its two important facts: the degree of concentration of 

 each race or nationality group, and the part of the community 

 in which each group is concentrated; two specific facts whose 

 explanation lies back in a more general fact — that of the social 

 and economic class to which each group belongs. For in general 

 a high degree of concentration in the poorer districts of urban 

 communities is an association of the low social and economic 

 classes, while a relatively low degree of concentration in the 

 better districts, of urban communities is an association of the 

 higher social and economic classes. 



Altho certain individuals of the New Immigration and of the 

 Colored are engaged in business or the professions, and altho 



"Koren, pp. 17-28: Bryce, Vol. II, p. 478; Commons, p. 170. 

 sKoren, pp. 232-237, 17-28. 



<sBryce, Vol. II, pp. 476, 478, 557; Lydston, p. 119; Jenks and Lauch, p. 51; 

 Haskins, pp. 147, 150; Breckenridge and Abbott, chap ii, especially pp. 57-59; Sym- 

 posium: Physical Bases of Crime, 58. 



