Study: Incarceration Rate Lower for Immigrants
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Immigrants in California are far less likely to land in prison than their U.S.-born counterparts, a finding that defies the perception that immigration and crime are connected, according to a study released Monday.
Foreign-born residents make up 35 percent of the state’s overall population, but only 17 percent of the adult prison population, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which conducted the research.
Noncitizen men from Mexico between the ages of 18 and 40, which the study indicated were more likely to be in the country illegally, were eight times less likely to be in a “correctional setting,” the study found.
{snip}
Nonetheless, these results have implications for the current debates over immigration policy, said Kristin Butcher, co-author of the report.
“Our research indicates that limiting immigration, requiring higher educational levels to obtain visas or spending more money to increase penalties against criminal immigrants will have little impact on public safety,” Butcher said in a statement.
{snip}
Current immigration laws, for example, screen legal immigrants for criminal activity. Also, all noncitizens—including those in the country legally—face deportation for crimes that carry a prison sentence of a year or more.
And those here illegally have incentive to avoid contact with the law, which could lead to detection of their immigration status.
{snip}
Also, the deportation of foreign-born criminals also could affect the rates, the study said.
[Editor’s Note: Crime, Correction, and California: What’s Immigration Got to Do With It?” can be read or downloaded as a PDF dovument here.]
Email Jill Tucker at jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
(Posted on February 26, 2008)
Press Release: Immigration Has Little to Do With California Crime
Public Policy Institute of California, February 25, 2008
Immigrants are far less likely than the average U.S. native to commit crime in California, according to a report released today by the Public Policy Institute of California. Significantly lower rates of incarceration and institutionalization among foreign-born adults suggest that longstanding fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified.
Key findings in the report, Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?:
* People born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California’s adult population but represent only about 17 percent of the state prison population.
* U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated in state prisons at rates up to 3.3 times higher than foreign-born men.
* Among men ages 18-40—the age group most likely to commit crime—those born in the United States are 10 times more likely than immigrants to be in county jail or state prison.
* Noncitizen men from Mexico ages 18-40—a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally—are more than 8 times less likely than U.S.-born men in the same age group to be in a correctional setting (0.48% vs. 4.2%).
The findings are striking because immigrants in California are more likely than the U.S.-born to be young and male and to have low levels of education—all characteristics associated with higher rates of crime and incarceration. Yet the report shows that institutionalization rates of young male immigrants with less than a high school diploma are extremely low, particularly when compared with U.S.-born men with low levels of education.
The low rates of criminal involvement by immigrants may be due in part to current U.S. immigration policy, which screens immigrants for criminal history and assigns extra penalties to noncitizens who commit crimes. The PPIC report has important implications for several reforms to immigration policy now under consideration.
“Our research indicates that limiting immigration, requiring higher educational levels to obtain visas, or spending more money to increase penalties against criminal immigrants will have little impact on public safety,” says Kristin Butcher, co-author of the report. “In California, as in the rest of the nation, immigrants already have extremely low rates of criminal activity.”
Consistent with national studies, the report also found lowered property and violent crime rates in California cities with a higher share of recent immigrants than in those with a lower share.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kristin F. Butcher is an associate professor of economics at Wellesley College.
Anne Morrison Piehl is an associate professor of economics and faculty affiliate in criminal justice at Rutgers University.
Comments
Illegals are in prison less often because most of them have not spent enough time in the US to get caught for criminal activity.
This fact is commonly mentioned at VDare.com, but eludes university professors.
Posted by White Gene at 7:14 PM on February 26
Just because one commits a crime doesn’t mean one winds up in prison. (And sometimes, vice versa). I think the fact that California’s “foreign born” population being relatively well-behaved can be explained by the fact that a lot of it is Asian.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 7:33 PM on February 26
Perhaps this reflects the fact that the inmates’ immigration status is not checked upon arrest, or at trial. I do wonder about the 1st generation gang members.
Posted by Mayne at 7:37 PM on February 26
This is another one of the Big Lies that liberals tell. The reality is that immigrant Hispanics are not the most violent Hispanics, their children are.
Mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone were not immigrants, they were children of immigrants who wanted to get money the easy way by preying on Americans.
Likewise, Jose Jimenez, born to immigrant parents, is much more likely to be violent than his parents are.
Now the way these researchers spin this is to say that “American born” people are more criminal that “foreign born” and conclude that immigration is not the problem.
They know better. You should too.
They avoid pointing out the truth, which is that the American born criminals are children of immigrants.
The immigrants are breeders of criminals, and we all have to pay the price.
Posted by Big Bill at 7:48 PM on February 26
I am not convinced. Last year I visited the Santa Clara County Jail one weekend morning trying to track down a friend.
When I signed in to the waiting area, I found I was the only white person there. Of approximately 100 visitors it was me ,one middle eastern man and the remainder were mexican - american or mexican nationals.
I trust my eyes over a fabricated report.
Posted by O.P. at 7:58 PM on February 26
“People born outside the United States make up about 35% of Callifornia’s adult population but represent only about 17% of the state prison population.”
Those are only the ones that they managed to catch. The rest ran away (mostly to Mexico).
“US-born adult men are incarcerated in state prison at rates up to 3.3 times higher than foreign-born men.”
Yes, and many are the US-born anchor baby spawn of the afore-mentioned foreign men.
“Among men ages 18-40—-the age group most likely to commit crime—-those born in the United States are 10 times more likely than immigrants to be in county jail or state prison.”
See above answer.
“Non-citizen men from Mexico ages 18-40—-a group disporportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally—-are more than 8 times less likely than US-born men in the same age group to be in a correctional setting.”
See response to #1.
How many people will read this and take it at face-value? Like “duh, the immigrants really are more gooder than us”. Geez!!
To quote Mark Twain, “There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Seems to apply here.
Posted by kitty at 8:33 PM on February 26
That’s because if you aren’t a citizen, you’ll get deported after serving your FIRST sentence, so you won’t have a chance to re-offend. Citizen felons stay and commit crime repeatedly. Non-citizens get deported. This is how it works:
10 out of 1,000 citizens (immigrant and native-born) commit a crime.
30 non-citizens out of 1,000 commit a crime, and then get deported.
per person on average.
So now we have more citizens in jail than non-citizens, but non-citizens still have a higher percentage of crime.
=======================
Immigrants are not one group. Wealthy Russian Jews, Asians and other successful groups do not commit the same amount of crime as the illiterate Mexican Indians and Haitian blacks.
Posted by at 9:59 PM on February 26
So what are they trying to say? That “people of color” should not be permitted to permanently reside in the US, because once they do, they have children, who, after being taught to “game the system”, begin marking out “their” territory and then begin engaging in violent criminal behavior in order to defend it, thus resulting in soaring crime rates?
Ronald
Posted by Ronald at 10:14 PM on February 26
I notice they don’t actually differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants.
Posted by Dara at 10:46 PM on February 26
I live in a community that has been flooded with Hispanics. It is obvious to me that the Hispanics are more law abiding than specific segments of the population that preceded them. This statistic just varifies my observations. In fact, some persons understandably link big drops in crime (like in New York City)
to the displacement of the crime producing population of the 1980’s by Hispanics. Hispanics have their faults (don’t maintain houses, lots of cars parked helter-skelter, etc.), but high crime is not one of them.
Posted by at 11:07 PM on February 26
More misinformation. I heard this first on Fox when Geraldo mentioned this on O’Reilly’s show and was not even challenged on this topic by Bill O’Reilly. The time factor is so obvious anyone with any common sense (no phd in statistics required) can see through this garbage. The book How to lie with statistics comes to mind. A professor of Economics co-authored this report. Were the statistics professors too busy ….. why not a professor of hispanic studies help out too?
Incarceration for a crime and commiting a crime are two different things. The article on Yahoo news “Study finds immigrants commit less California Crime”. How about the illegals who commit crimes and go back to Mexico? We all know it has been a revolving door down there on our “border”. I’m sure with McCain and Obama waiting in the wings things can only get worse.
Posted by Slave_To_Logic at 11:40 PM on February 26
It needs to be mentioned that the crime rate of American citizens includes Blacks, who skew the average. In fact, there is no honest reason ever to discuss crime rates without separating by race. It’s like calculating the average speed of birds from a sampling of hawks and penguins. Furthermore, other than auto theft and the ethnic cleansing of Blacks, most immigrant crime is committed against their brethren, who don’t report it. The article is a pack of lies by omission.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 1:34 AM on February 27
Hispanics have their faults (don’t maintain houses, lots of cars parked helter-skelter, etc.), but high crime is not one of them.
Posted by at 11:07 PM on February 26
Sure. Visit Los Angeles where I live. We have the media lying to us, telling us crime is down while at the same time the County Jail, which keeps expanding, can’t hold all the criminals. Almost all of the criminals are “hispanics”. We have the news telling us crime is down while it’s impossible to go to many areas of this town at night without seeing hordes of latino gangbangers out on the prowl.
The Public Policy Institute is well known for being full of manure with its anti-white Marxist “studies” and so on. Why even bother to post stories or studies like this?
Posted by Don't believe it at 2:47 AM on February 27
I think the people who did this study are a bunch of liberals who are lying through their teeth. Liberals have no compunction about making up “facts” and statistics to advance their agenda, just ask Ron Fitzsimmons or Dr. Bernard Nathanson. (Those of you who’ve done any research into the abortion issue will know who those two are.)
Posted by qwerty at 4:00 AM on February 27
California has many sanctuary cities. Since criminals are not ask their immigration status in these cities, there are many illegals sitting in jail whose immigration status is not listed. Also it appears that they are talking about state prisons and not taking into account federal prisons.
Sanctuary Cities
• Bell Gardens, CA
• City of Industry, CA
• City of Commerce, CA
• Cypress, CA
• Davis CA
• Downey, CA
• Fresno, CA
• Lakewood, CA
• Los Angeles, CA
• Long Beach, CA
• Lynwood, CA
• Maywood, CA
• Montebello, CA
• National City, CA
• Norwalk, CA
• Paramount, CA
• Pico Rivera, CA
• So. Gate, CA
• San Bernardino, Ca.
• San Diego, CA
• Santa Cruz, CA
• San Francisco,
• San Jose, CA
• Sonoma County, CA
• Vernon, CA
• Watsonville, CA
• Wilmington, CA
http://www.libnot.com/2007/08/15/sanctuary-sanctuary-a-list-of-reported-cities-towns-and-states-that-have-immigration-sanctuary-policies/
“Adult illegal aliens represented 3.1 percent of the total adult population of the country in 2003.1 By comparison, the illegal alien prison population represented a bit more than 4.54 percent of the overall prison population. Therefore, deportable criminal aliens were more than half again as likely to be incarcerated as their share of the population.”
“The misleading data produced by academics and think tank researchers that show a lower incidence of crime by aliens is based upon a comparison of data that include all foreign born residents with data for the native born population. Because these data compare all foreign born residents to the native born population, they are largely irrelevant to describing the illegal alien crime incidence.2”
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_illegalsandcrime
“The book How to lie with statistics comes to mind.”
Posted by Slave_To_Logic at 11:40 PM on February 26
There is a old saying, “Figures don’t lie, but lairs figures.”
Posted by Drifter at 6:30 AM on February 27
>>>Noncitizen men from Mexico between the ages of 18 and 40, which the study indicated were more likely to be in the country illegally, were eight times less likely to be in a “correctional setting,”
Of course, given the crime reports emanating from Southern California, WE ARE EXPECTED TO BELIEVE THIS STUDY?
Why would this “study” call to memory the phrase: “Figures don’t lie, and liars don’t figure.”
If illegal immigrants from Mexico actually WERE LESS LIKELY TO BE INCARCERATED, the only logical inference to be drawn from that study is that they either have not been caught yet, or simply let go, given the overcrowded prison conditions facing California. I don’t know about YOU, friend… Me, I simply take this “study” to be another attempt to brainwash Americans into believing “immigration is good for us. Good for our economy.” (Or whatever current pro-immigration lie happens to be in vogue for today.)
Posted by Fed Up at 7:56 AM on February 27
What did Mark Twain say?
“There are lies, damn lies, and statistics”.
My hunch is whoever came up with this played fast and loose with the numbers.
Posted by Dennis at 9:36 AM on February 27
The conclusions in this research seem about as valid as in the following: “Persons who do not bring home insulin lower the chances of having a diabetic in the household (because diabetics are over-represented in the housholds that stash insulin).”
Here are possible flaws in the research reported in this article.
1. It has been long-standing practice in California to not enquire inmates about their immigration status. This makes any “official” statistics regarding percentage of immigrants among inmate population an obvious underestimate.
2. Immigrants, particularly illegal ones, who commit a crime punishable by jail or prison tend to change the identity or flee to their native countries. This makes them unlikely inmates. Virtually all outstanding warrants in Los Angeles for homicides belong to that category: the suspect fled to Mexico or wherever they “immigrated” from.
3. Also, these are the children of the immigrants that drive the crime rates up. For instance, notorious and violent Latino gangs in Southern California are composed mostly of American-born offsprings of Mexican (mostly illegal) immigrants.
So, take the “statistscs” that is presented there with a grain of salt. Small flaws in the methodology may lead to gross misinterpretation of the facts.
Posted by A Reader at 10:15 AM on February 27
I don’t know about California…but here in TEXAS our jails are BULGING at the seams with IMMIGRANTS…both LEGAL & ILLEGAL…MOSTLY ILEGAL…just WHAT planet is this man from?
Posted by Suzan Donoghue at 11:45 AM on February 27
What’s funny about this, is that all across the country outside california, anti-immigation forces have sometimes said immigrantion raises crime rates, and these very same people (the media) responded by saying, we still should allow more immigration, and it’s perhaps evil to point out these differences. Now, these difference are pointed out, to say here, immigration is just great!
So, now can the other 49 states cut back on immigration because there immigrants do cause more crime? I don’t think this is how the media coverage goes in the other 49 states…
Posted by at 11:48 AM on February 27
>>>I live in a community that has been flooded with Hispanics. It is obvious to me that the Hispanics are more law abiding than specific segments of the population that preceded them.
WOW! And here I thought nobody but Hillary Clinton could spout whoppers like that and expect to be taken seriously.
We Houstonians have been FLOODED by Hispanics over the last 25 years. Until the utter stupidity of our mayor welcoming the Katrina immigrants… GUESS WHICH RACIAL GROUP LED THE CRIME STATISTICS IN HOUSTON? Now guess WHY our government officials, ever solicitious of our peace of mind… lists Hispanics as Whites whenever possible (like when they simply CAN’T describe a WANTED rapist, murderer, or other felon as White).
I can only surmise our unsigned poster (and I sure would not care to admit to voicing a lie like that either) is either Hispanic himself, is making beaucoup bucks by hiring them as cheap labor, a politician, a spokesman for an immigration group, or a deluded religious zealot (or all or several of these).
Posted by Fed Up at 1:04 PM on February 27
Politically motivated academics
Posted by Tim at 2:26 PM on February 27
“And those here illegally have incentive to avoid contact with the law”
No kidding. With the calculations of liberal statisticians, too.
As has been pointed out, those in prison do not represent the entire population of criminals. Not all criminals are in prison at any given time. What would the police do if they were?
Let’s not forget that every illegal immigrant is, by definition, a criminal.
Posted by W.D. at 2:27 PM on February 27
Wellesley college, home of marxist feminazis since the 19th century. Believe nothing that comes out of Wellesley. In fact believe nothing that comes out of any female college professor.
Posted by margaret at 4:31 PM on February 27
The New Century Foundation released a study that showed immigrants were more likely to be in prison. Jared Taylor, AmRen, and the New Century Foundation were reported to law enforcement as being a hate group. No respectable organization printed it.
This nearly identical report, shows the exact opposite information for California. Natives are more likely to be in prison.
One report is a shameful item of hate.
The other report becomes a headline story and a study on which to base public policy, and probably part of the curriculum. It’s celebrated.
If you ask me, hate always seems to flow in one direction. The same direction as immigration. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
Posted by at 5:26 PM on February 27
Just goes to show me how SPIN can distort any facts. Just pay the right people/MSM to put it out there! AS a resident of CA and reader of daily crime reports, I so not believe the data. V
Posted by Vickie at 12:42 AM on February 28
These CA figures do not match the rest of the country. Therefore, they are suspect.
Posted by Frank at 12:08 PM on February 28
In support of my considering the above article a joke… let me refer readers to a story on today’s MSN News. A story stating nearly 1% — one in every hundred Americans — is incarcerated. What makes the story ludicrous is that they do not break the prison population down on a racial basis. Nor do they point out in the story that a healthy percentage are illegal aliens by legal definition — Mexicans and other Latin American criminals! The inference from that absurd study — that Hispanics are NOT crime prone (like Blacks, for example) has to be a joke. Unless we have a half-hundred Mexicans flitting around the country to commit their crimes — flying in a hypersonic scramjet or something similar.
Posted by Fed Up at 9:08 AM on February 29