Journal article
Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, Vol.117(51), pp.32340-32347
12/22/2020
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2014704117
PMID: 33288713
Abstract
Despite its centrality to public and political discourse, we lack even basic information on fundamental questions regarding undocumented immigrants and crime. This stems largely from data constraints. Going beyond existing research, we utilize data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which checks and records the immigration status of all arrestees throughout the state. Contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years. Our findings help us understand why the most aggressive immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future. We make use of uniquely comprehensive arrest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety to compare the criminality of undocumented immigrants to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens between 2012 and 2018. We find that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. In addition, the proportion of arrests involving undocumented immigrants in Texas was relatively stable or decreasing over this period. The differences between US-born citizens and undocumented immigrants are robust to using alternative estimates of the broader undocumented population, alternate classifications of those counted as “undocumented” at arrest and substituting misdemeanors or convictions as measures of crime.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas
- Creators
- Michael T. Light - University of Wisconsin–MadisonJingying He - University of Wisconsin–MadisonJason P. Robey - University of Wisconsin–Madison
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, Vol.117(51), pp.32340-32347
- DOI
- 10.1073/pnas.2014704117
- PMID
- 33288713
- ISSN
- 0027-8424
- eISSN
- 1091-6490
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Number of pages
- 8
- Grant note
- 1849297 / National Science Foundation (NSF) 2019-R2-CX-0058 / DOJ | National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 12/22/2020
- Academic Unit
- Sociology and Criminology
- Record Identifier
- 9985182417302771
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