The somewhat less favorable showing made by the foreign-born in the case of those committed than of those enumerated, is accounted for by the large proportion of minor offenses among the foreign-born. Many minor offenders, serving short sentences, would not be included at all in the enumeration. Over half the major offenders among the foreign-born had been in the United States ten years or more, and about two thirds of the minor offenders. According to the Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration for 1908 (p. 98), there were in the penal institutions of the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico (in which the figures are not large enough to affect the conclusions materially), in 1908, 149,897 inmates, of whom 15,323 were aliens, 8102 naturalized, and 126,562 native-born. Thus the percentage of native-born was 84.4 and of foreign-born 15.6. The Immigration Commission made a careful study of the matter of crime among the immigrants, reviewing the foregoing data, and collecting some original data of its own, covering 2206 convictions in the New York City Court of General Sessions from October 1, 1908, to June 30, 1909. This is, so far as known to the Commission, the first time that any court in the United States had made a record of the race of persons convicted in it. This fact illustrates the utter inadequacy of the data for making any deductions as to the influence of immigration upon crime in the United States. Not only courts, but police departments and penal institutions, are very lax in their keeping of records in this respect.