IMMIGRATIONHow a Manhattan Institute Comparison of Immigrant Incarceration Rates Is Rhetorically Misleading
I compared incarceration rates between Somali immigrants, native-born Americans, all legal immigrants, and all illegal immigrants in the 18–54 age range. The Somali adult (18-54) immigrant incarceration rate in the US in 2023 was slightly below that of native-born Americans, according to American Community Survey.
Two scholars at the Manhattan Institute (MI) objected to my tweet, noting that Somalis aged 18–54 have an incarceration rate above that of other immigrant groups but below that of native-born Americans in the same age range. They did their own analysis and found that male 18–29 year old Somali immigrants who arrived age 15 or younger have a higher incarceration rate than all native-born American males and white native-born American men in the same age group.
Both analyses are correct, but they claim theirs is an apples-to-apples comparison and that mine is misleading. Their analysis is not apples-to-apples, nor was mine misleading.
How can both be correct? Because they answer different questions by estimating different parameters. Researchers comparing incarceration rates between groups must choose the groups. There must be a comparison because there is no objective high or low incarceration rate without reference to other incarceration rates. My original tweet compared incarceration rates between Somali immigrants, native-born Americans, all legal immigrants, and all illegal immigrants in the 18–54 age range. That age range was chosen to increase the accurate identification of the incarcerated population in the American Community Survey data. That’s an apples-to-apples comparison because it’s a population-level comparison.
MI compares smaller subsets of those populations based on sex, age, and age at arrival. MI’s subgroup analysis does not overturn my population-level finding that Somali immigrants are incarcerated at lower rates than native-born Americans. You wouldn’t know that by reading their headline, which implies a population-level analysis: “Yes, Somali Immigrants Commit More Crime Than Natives.” Should have been “Young Male Somali Immigrants Who Have Been in the US for Many Years Have Higher Incarceration Rates.”
My population level estimate does not invalidate theirs. However, MI goes a step further to claim that theirs is an apples-to-apples comparison that corrects my “misleading comparison.” They made additional choices to compare different slices of the incarceration data to other groups, which I did not. But their choices mean that their analysis is not apples-to-apples. Let me explain.
