Figures tending to show that not only is the percentage of Jewish criminals less than the percentage of the Jewish population to the whole population but that despite the increase over the last ten years in the Jewish population a decline in Jewish adult delinquency has been noted and that the Jewish juvenile delinquency rate has been decreasing more rapidly than that of the general population were made public today through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Judge Otto Rosalsky of the Court of General Sessions. The statistics were compiled for Judge Rosalsky by Edwin J. Cooley, chief probation officer of the Court of General Sessions.
The figures recently made public by the American Jewish Committee in refutation of the charge by Judge Nathan Cayton of municipal court of the District of Columbia, that Jews contribute more than their proportionate share of criminals, are confirmed by the statistics released by Judge Rosalsky.
According to these figures in 1916 the rate of Jewish adult delinquency was 0.89 percent of the Jewish population as compared with 0.76 in 1926. During this same period there has been a 20 percent increase in the Jewish population of New York for which these figures are. The number of Jewish inmates committed to Randalls Island has decreased from 14.88 percent in 1924 to 5.86 in 1925 and 5.2 in 1926.
Dr. Cooley’s report to Judge Rosalsky reveals that from 1920 to 1926, 8,484 or 22.9 of the total of juveniles arranged for delinquency in New York were Jewish. In the children’s courts 976 cases of Jewish children in 1926 as compared with 1,739 cases of Jewish children in 1916, a decrease of 43.9 is reported. In this connection Dr. Cooley says that the Jewish juvenile delinquency rate has been lower than that of the general population and has been decreasing faster, having fallen from 0.115 per cent of the Jewish population in 1916 to only 0.056 in 1926.
In other cities similar law-abiding tendencies upon the part of Jews are reported says Dr. Cooley. Of 868 arraignments in the Buffalo children’s court in 1928 only seven were Jewish cases. This is at a rate of less than one-fourth of the Jewish to the general population. Out of 300 inmates at the Erie County Jail in 1928 only two were Jews. At the Erie County Penitentiary there were two Jews of a total of 872 in 1929.
In Newark where the Jewish population is 15 percent of the total there were no Jewish children in the Parental Home at the time of the survey in 1928 and information obtained from the superintendent showed that few Jewish children were there during the past several years. Of 220 boys at the New Jersey State Home for Boys there were only two Jews in 1928. At the state prison in Elmira Warden Christian declared that there were 67 Jews committed in 1924, 60 in 1925, 50 in 1926, 37 in 1927, and that there has been a constant decrease in the last ten years. Jews once composed 15 percent of Elmira’s prison population and now they are but 5 percent.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
