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New Directions in Research on Immigration and Crime

NCJ Number
309968
Author(s)
Date Published
2024
Length
45 pages
Annotation

This paper reports on a project that had the objective of improving understanding of the immigration-crime relationship by addressing several areas of inquiry that represent key omissions in the literature.

Abstract

The research presented in this report addresses some key omissions in the available literature regarding the relationship between immigration and crime rates, specifically, how the immigration-crime relationship may be dependent on context and how immigration-related policies and practices might impact the relationship between immigration and crime. The research relied on data from a variety of sources from the years 2000 through 2016. The report documents the research methodology and outcomes, noting that the ability to examine and document the nuanced nature of immigration-crime relationships is directly attributable to the authors’ newly created data set, the National Incident Crime Study (NICS), which reveals significant variation in patterns of immigration and patterns of crime across neighborhoods in the research sample. Results indicate that the nature of the immigration-crime nexus is more complex than originally thought, and that a negative relationship between percent immigrants and property crime is associated with seven percent less property crime at the neighborhood level while holding other variables constant. Other results have insights regarding different aspects of immigrant diversity or heterogeneity in a community.

Date Published: January 1, 2024