Relationship between legal immigration and drug crime - Dissertation Example

?Running Head: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGAL IMMIGRATION AND CRIME Relationship between Legal Immigration and Crime Relationship between Legal Immigration and Crime Introduction The study of the relationship between immigration and crime is not one that can be simply understood as "will increased immigration lead to an increase in amount of crimes committed in a given area?" The short answer is yes, we know that as the population expands, so does the volume of crimes committed due to the increase in the number of potential offenders (Hagan and Palloni, 1998). The issue that criminologists focus on is whether immigration is associated with higher than expected increases in levels of criminal deviance (Rodriguez et al., 2008). Crime researchers have addressed this question using one of two general approaches. The first is through individual-level analyses that examine immigrant involvement in crime. Such studies provide insight into the question of whether immigrants are involved disproportionately in the commission of criminal acts (Rodriguez et al., 2008). The second approach is less interested in the criminal behavior of individuals, focusing instead on the impacts of immigration, measured at the macro-level, on observed levels of crime. Using data measured at higher levels of aggregation (i.e., neighborhoods, cities, metropolitan areas), this line of scholarship is concerned with the extent to which the presence of an area's foreign-born population affects levels of crime, net of structural and socio-demographic characteristics of an area. Studies falling into this category address the question of whether immigration is related to increased levels of crime (Sampson, 2008). This paper will review the historical immigration/crime and the findings reported in both the contemporary micro- and macro-level criminological research on this topic to find out the relationship between crime and immigration. Historical Studies on Immigration and Crime The earliest quantitative studies that focused explicitly on the immigrant/crime link began to emerge as rates of immigration peaked in the early decades of the twentieth century (Bui and Thongniramol, 2005). Three separate reports issued during this period represent the earliest research efforts to take seriously the notion that there may be nativity differences in patterns of criminal offending. A 1901 report issued by the Industrial Commission concluded that foreign-born whites were less involved in crime than their native-born counterparts. This conclusion was supported in a report released by the Immigrant Commission a decade later. In 1911 the Immigrant Commission argued that there was no evidence indicating that immigrants contributed disproportionately to increases in crime. The most extensive of the three reports, the "Wickersham Report," was released in 1931 by the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. The conclusions drawn by the Wickersham Report are similar to those mentioned above that, in general, there was little evidence supporting the notion that foreigners engaged in higher levels of criminal activity than natives (Martinez, 2002; LaFree et al. 2000). Exceptions to this general trend were also noted in the early immigration/crime research. For example, each of the reports mentioned disparities in levels of offending across immigrant generations. Increased involvement in criminal behavior was seen as a consequence of assimilating into American society, particularly for members of the second generation. The Wickersham Report also suggested that immigrants may be more likely to be involved in particular types of crime (i.e., homicide). The conclusions drawn in the early immigration/crime studies have been viewed with suspicion mainly because they were not based on careful empirical analyses. An author of one of the sections of the Wickersham report questioned the results from any criminological research of the period because of the limitations of the data and the lack of methodological sophistication used to analyze them (see LaFree et al. 2000). Despite their methodological shortcomings, the early research was important because it recognized that immigration might have more than a simple, positive impact on crime. Contemporary Immigration Research Immigrant Involvement in Crime There is little disputing that immigrants, on average, arrive in the United States lacking many of the skills and resources necessary for conventional success (Weissbrodt & Danielson, 2005). This pattern is not universal, as members of some immigrant groups arrive in the United States with valuable occupational or educational training (see Massey 1995; Alba et al. 1999). Nevertheless, the fact remains that upon arrival, many immigrants lack the human capital (e.g., job training, English proficiency, formal education), which would help to smooth their transition into life in American society. Butcher and Piehl (1998a) point out that this lack of marketable skills may lead to a higher level of criminal engagement among immigrants. The authors speculate that when confronted with "poorer legal sector opportunities" illegitimate opportunities may become increasingly attractive (Butcher and Piehl 1998, p. 655). Moreover, immigrants have limited residential options and tend to settle in more disadvantaged neighborhoods. The 2000 Census reports that the average immigrant lives in an area that is poorer, is comprised of fewer college graduates, and has a higher unemployment rate than the average neighborhood of a native-born individual. The differences are even more pronounced when the characteristics of the neighborhoods inhabited by recent immigrants are compared to those of natives. The combination of narrow occupational and residential opportunities gives reason to believe that immigrants will have an increased likelihood of criminal involvement. Due to the hardship endured by immigrants, criminologists would expect the "ethnicity of criminals and their victims [to reflect] the recency of arrival in this country" (Short 1997, p. 7). Implicit in the immigrant involvement hypothesis is the notion that the likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior diminishes as a product of time spent in the United States. On the other hand, there is also evidence suggesting that assimilation into American society, measured as either years in the United States or immigrant generation, is associated with an increased likelihood of criminal involvement or other forms of deviant conduct. For example, research has shown that immigrants are less likely to receive public assistance, have lower levels of non-marital fertility, and have higher levels of academic achievement than their native-born individuals (Zhou and Bankston 1998). Although none of these factors is a direct measure of criminal involvement, these results do suggest a general pro-social orientation among immigrants. A similar point is made by Zhou and Bankston (1998) who report that second generation Vietnamese adolescents are significantly more likely to engage in delinquent activities than foreign-born youths (both first and 1.5 generations). Furthermore, the authors provide evidence that the delinquents have more characteristics in common with US born individuals than with the first generation Vietnamese. This suggests that, as many community members contend, the "over-Americanization" of these youths is at the root of their deviant behavior. The limited scope of the Zhou and Bankston (1998) study make it difficult to generalize their findings to the wider population. However, this result does raise an important question, and one that is not explicitly considered by social disorganization theory. Moving beyond the analysis of a single community, research also fails to provide clear support for assertion that assimilation into American society reduces the likelihood of criminal participation. For example, in a study of self-reported criminal behavior and convictions for a sample of adolescents and young adults (ages 15-23), Butcher and Piehl (1998b: 483) find that younger, unemployed males are the most likely to report engaging in criminal acts. These findings mirror the results presented in much criminological research. However, the authors report that immigrants are significantly less likely than their native-born counterparts to report committing a crime, being convicted, or coming into contact with a criminal justice agency (i.e., police, courts). Butcher and Piehl (1998b) interpret these results as evidence that immigrants-and particularly younger immigrants-do not engage in crime at levels significantly higher than natives. Researchers have also used rates of institutionalization to gauge levels of immigrant involvement in crime. The focus on institutionalization is justified due to the fact that some scholars find that immigrants are over-represented in prison populations (McDonald 1997). Hagan and Palloni (1999) argue that because prison statistics fail to consider important pre-incarceration factors, they do not accurately reflect immigrant criminality. Hagan and Palloni (1999) contend that part of the reason for immigrant over-representation in prisons is attributable to their elevated chances of pre-trial detention. Once imprisonment rates are adjusted to account for their increased likelihood of detention, Hagan and Palloni (1999: 626) show that immigrants in El Paso and San Diego are incarcerated at lower rates than natives. In a national study of institutionalization rates among recent and non-recent immigrants between 1970-1990, Butcher and Piehl (1998a) report that immigrants are institutionalized at lower levels than individuals born in the US. Additionally, the authors find that recent immigrants, measured as those who arrived within the past five years, are committed to institutions at lower levels than non-recent immigrants. The lower level of institutionalization experienced by recent immigrants emerges, despite the fact that they have the lowest levels of human capital (e.g., educational attainment). Although the authors are unable to identify the specific institutional settings of respondents, Butcher and Piehl (1998a: 677) conclude that "if natives had the same institutionalization probabilities as immigrants, our jails and prisons would have one- third fewer inmates." The research reviewed above indicates that immigrants are not involved in crime at disproportionately higher levels than their native-born counterparts. Despite initial deficits in human capital, the research on immigrant involvement in crime consistently shows that immigrants generally engage in criminal activity at lower levels than native- born individuals. The Effects of Immigration on Crime The amount of criminological research conducted on immigration varies proportionally with overall rates of immigration. When levels of immigration ebbed during the middle of the last century, relatively little academic attention was paid to this topic. Similarly, as rates of immigration increased over the past decade, criminologists have shown a renewed interest in understanding the extent to which patterns of criminal behavior are tied to the influx of foreigners (Martinez 2002). Although immigration research has the potential to inform many crime theories, much of the recent research tests hypotheses derived from the social disorganization perspective. Below is a review of the findings in the recent empirical literature that focuses on the impacts of immigration on aggregate levels of crime. Martinez (2002) compares neighborhood structural conditions and homicide rates between Hispanic and non-Hispanic racial groups in five American cities (Miami, El Paso, San Diego, Chicago, and Houston). Using racially and ethnically disaggregated victimization data, Martinez (2002) finds that rates of Hispanic homicide victimization are consistently higher than similar rates for non-Hispanic whites and lower than those for non-Hispanic blacks. The methodology employed in this analysis is largely descriptive, but Martinez points out that Hispanics are victims of homicides at lower rates than non-Hispanic blacks, despite the fact that both groups live in structurally similar neighborhoods. Indeed, Martinez (2002: 141) argues that rates of Latino homicide are lower than expected given the levels structural disadvantage of many Hispanic neighborhoods. In Latino Homicide, Martinez never uses multivariate techniques as a means of empirically documenting the negative effect of immigration on rates of killing, although this is the logical implication of his findings. There is quantitative evidence in the research literature of a negative direct effect of immigration on violent crime. Again using racially disaggregated homicide data for three cities, Lee et al. (2001; see also Lee 2003) find that the size of the recently arrived immigrant population in Miami is inversely related to levels of homicide. For the other two cities under investigation (E1 Paso and San Diego), the authors report that immigration has insignificant effects in all but one of the regression analyses. The authors interpret the combination of negative and null findings as non-supportive of either theoretical expectations or popular sentiment regarding the association between immigration and crime (Lee et al. 2001, p. 571). Similarly, in a study of Chicago neighborhoods that collected observational data using the systematic social observation method, Sampson and Raudenbush (1999) report an inverse association between community levels of "concentrated immigration" and robbery rates. The research mentioned above does find some support for social disorganization theory in that social structural factors such as poverty and residential instability have significant positive effects on violence. Two general conclusions can be drawn from the research on the effects of immigration on crime. First, the weight of the evidence suggests that immigration is not associated with increased levels of crime. To the extent that a relationship does exist, the literature consistently finds a negative effect of immigration on levels of crime, and particularly homicide. This finding works against the theoretical logic of the social disorganization perspective. Second, the criminological research on immigration also finds partial support for the theory, evidenced by the strong and significant impacts of social structural characteristics on levels of crime. Just as social disorganization theory predicts, indicators such as poverty and residential instability emerge as significant predictors of crime. In light of these contrasting results, immigration researchers generally interpret the unexpected negative impact of immigration on crime as a limitation of social disorganization theory. Conclusion Quantitative research has analyzed the relationship between immigration and crime both at the micro- and macro-levels. The individual-level analyses focus on whether foreign-born individuals are involved in crime at disproportionately higher levels than natives. Results from the earliest historical studies have been somewhat mixed, showing that immigrants may have higher levels of involvement in some types of crime (i.e., homicide). More generally, the historical research on immigration finds little support for the notion that immigrants have a higher criminal propensity than natives. Contemporary research has examined immigrant representation in crime using both self­ reported criminal involvement and information regarding institutional commitments of immigrants. Both types of research draw similar conclusions regarding the relationship between immigration and crime; that is, despite arriving in the United States with deficits in human capital, immigrants have lower levels of criminal engagement than their native­ born counterparts. References Alba, Richard D., John R. Logan, B. 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Pp. 367-387 in The Immigration Debate edited by James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Hagan, John and Alberto Palloni. 1999. Sociological Criminology and the Myth of Hispanic Immigration and Crime. Social Problems 46: 617-632. LaFree, Gary, Robert J. Bursik, Sr., James Short, and Ralph B. Taylor. 2000. The Changing Nature of Crime in America. edited by G. LaFree and R. Bursik. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice. Lamm, Richard D. and Gary Imhoff. 1985. The Immigration Time Bomb: The Fragmenting of America. New York: Truman Talley Press. Lee, Matthew T. 2003. Crime on the Border: Immigration and Homicide in Urban Communities. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. Lee, Matthew T., Ramiro Martinez, Jr., and Richard Rosenfeld. 2001. Does Immigration Increase Homicide? Negative Evidence From Three Border Cities. The Sociological Quarterly 42: 559-580. Martinez, Ramiro, Jr. 2002. Latino Homicide: Immigration, Violence, and Community. New York: Routledge Press. Massey, Douglass S. 1995. Getting Away with Murder: Segregation and Violent Crime in America. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 143: 1203-1232. McDonald, William F. 1997. Crime and Illegal Immigration. National Institute of Justice Jouma1232:2-10. Rodriguez, H. , Saenz, R. , & Menjivar, C. (2008). Latinas/os in the United States: Changing the face of America. New York: Springer. Sampson, R. J. (2008) Rethinking crime and immigration. Contexts vol. 7. pp. 28–33. Sampson, Robert 1. and Stephan W. Raudenbush. 1999. Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods. American Journal of Sociology 105: 603-651. Short, James F. 1997. Poverty, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime. Boulder: Westview Press. Weissbrodt, D. S., & Danielson, L. (2005). Immigration law and procedure in a nutshell. St. Paul, MN: Thomson/West. Zhou, Min and Carl L. Bankston. 1998. Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press. Read More