The Mythical Tie Between Immigration and Crime

The exception is Mexican and Central American immigrants, but the higher incarceration rates for this group since 2005 is largely attributed to the fact that the Census data combines incarceration for criminal acts with detentions for immigration-related offenses, the researchers say in the paper. Incarceration rates among Mexican and Central American immigrants were similar to those of U.S.-born individuals between 1980 and 2005. 

What’s more, comparing the imprisonment of Mexican and Central American immigrants to that of white males born in the United States based on education tells a different story, according to Abramitzky. Men without a high school degree are the group most likely to be incarcerated for criminal activity. “But Mexican and Central American immigrants with low levels of education, which comprise a large share of immigrants from this region, are significantly less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born men with similarly low levels of education,” he says.

Abramitzky’s co-authors include Leah Platt Boustan, an economics professor at Princeton and co-author of Streets of Gold; Elisa Jácome, an assistant professor of economics at Northwestern and a former SIEPR postdoctoral fellow; Santiago Pérez, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Davis; and Juan David Torres, a Stanford PhD student in economics and former predoctoral fellow at SIEPR.

Immigrants vs. U.S.-Born: Different Economic Forces
In setting out to compare criminality over time, the researchers took on a big challenge: Finding credible evidence of a connection between immigration and crime — and over a long time period — is extremely difficult. Other studies have relied on arrests records, but those do not include immigration status or birthplace. They also include arrests for minor infractions, which can reflect police bias more than actual crimes.

Instead, Abramitzky and his collaborators chose to analyze incarceration rates, which they say are better indicators of serious crime because they often require a conviction. As their primary data source, they turned to decennial censuses and surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau, which include information on individuals in correctional facilities and their birthplace — thereby allowing the researchers to build what they say is the first nationally representative dataset of incarceration rates for immigrants and the U.S.-born going back 170 years.

The researchers say it’s not entirely clear why the data show that immigrants have been imprisoned at increasingly lower rates than U.S.-born males since 1960. 

“Many of the explanations we had in mind turned out to NOT be right when we looked at the data,” Abramitzky says. For example, examining differences in age, marital status, or education levels among immigrants didn’t provide a clue. Nor did changes in immigration policy or the states in which immigrants settled. 

It is also unlikely, he says, that deportations contributed to the relatively lower rates of immigrant incarcerations.

The researchers conclude the likely explanation is that first-generation immigrants are faring better overall (and not just with respect to incarceration rates) than are U.S.-born men — especially compared to those without a high school diploma.

Globalization and advances in technology have hit white males hard, especially those who were born in the United States and who didn’t finish high school. Compared to immigrants, they are much more likely to be unemployed, unmarried, and in poor health — and perhaps more prone to commit crimes as a result, Abramitzky says.

The manual jobs that immigrants typically take on have been stable by comparison. Other studies have shown that immigrants also are, among other characteristics, highly adaptable and resilient.

“Recent waves of immigrants are more likely to be employed, married with children, and in good health,” Abramitzky says. “Far from the rapists and drug dealers that anti-immigrant politicians claim them to be, immigrants today are doing relatively well and have largely been shielded from the social and economic forces that have negatively affected low-educated U.S.-born men.”

Krysten Crawford writes about the research and work of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) affiliates as well as the institute’s programs and initiatives. The article was originally posted on the website of Stanford University.