"Where East Meets West": Police, Immigration and Public Order Crime in the Settlement of Canada from 1896 to 1940

Abstract

* This research was made possible by a grant from SSHRCC for an historical study of prairie provincial police institutions (#410-91-1395). We thank A. R. Gillis, Tullio Caputo, Leslie Miller, as well as an anonymous reviewer for journal for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Abstract: In late 19th century police in North America and Britain prosecuted public order offenses as a way of regulating moral and criminal conduct of lower classes. Between 1896 and 1940, public order law was similarly employed to assimilate `dangerous foreigners' from southern and eastern Europe. Time series evidence from Canada suggests there was a significant long term relationship between public order offenses (drunkenness and vagrancy) and non-British immigration. There was no long run relationship between immigration and serious crimes. The analysis supports a cultural conflict perspective regarding policing of foreign immigrants. Resume: A la fin du 19e siecle, la police en Amerique du Nord et en Grande-Bretagne poursuivait en justice les delits de desordre public comme moyen decontrole de la conduite morale et criminelle des classes defavorisees. Entre 1896 et 1940, la loi sur l'ordre public etait employee de facon semblable pour assimiler les etrangers dangereux de l'Europe du Sud et de l'Est. Les donness recueillies du Canada suggerent qu'il y a un lien a long terme significatif entre les delits de desordre public (etat d'ebriete et vagabondage) et les immigrants qui ne sont pas d'origine Britannique. Il n'y avait pas de lien a long terme entre l'immigration et les crimes plus serieux. L'analyse demontre un conflit de perspective culturelle a l'egard du maintien de l'ordre parmi les immigrants. Introduction During latter part of nineteenth century and first decades of twentieth century, moral reformers associated with social gospel movement, temperance, and women's movement argued that immigrants, particularly from central and eastern European countries, contributed disproportionably to trends in crime. In US this concern was reflected in William Dillingham's report to Immigration Commission, Immigration and Crime (1911) which noted that juvenile delinquency is more common among immigrants than it is among Americans (1911: 1). Dillingham attributed such differences to congestion of cities. By contrast, there was some opinion among Canadian experts that criminal propensities varied by race. In his 1931 census monograph, economist W. Burton Hurd stated that the propensity to crime is in some measure at least a product of racial background (1942: 167). As police records indicate, there were also grave concerns among police about suitability of certain European immigrants for citizenship, and their capacity to live as intelligent and law-abiding people. The police, as harbingers of state, found that task of educating immigrants meant extracting compliance with laws by policing them, and by forcing them before courts for infractions of law. In 1917, Inspector of Edmonton Division of Alberta Provincial Police suggested that [i]n this district there is a large community of extremely ignorant people. Administer law as it is administered among our Canadian people, and these people may be spoken of one day as intelligent. Cease to administer it and these people will never be good citizens or have any respect for laws of country (Alberta, 1917). The annual reports of Alberta Provincial Police suggest that this view was shared by other senior policemen. APP Inspector J.S. Piper of Division A (Edmonton) reported to Commissioner in 1928 that the increase in number of both murder and stealing can be attributed to foreign population mostly, who often think they have right to take law into their own hands, and settle any dispute that may happen to arise. In 1938 Thorsten Sellin advanced a cultural conflict theory of crime which suggested that immigrants often ran afoul of criminal law because their cultural norms were contrary to those dominant in North America. …