University at Buffalo
Political discussions
about immigrants often include the claim that there is a relationship between
immigration patterns and increased crime.
However, results of a University at
Buffalo-led study find no links between the two.
In fact, immigration actually
appears to be linked to reductions in some types of crimes, according to the
findings.
"Our research
shows strong and stable evidence that, on average, across U.S. metropolitan
areas crime and immigration are not linked," said Robert Adelman, an
associate professor of sociology at UB and the paper's lead author.
"The
results show that immigration does not increase assaults and, in fact,
robberies, burglaries, larceny, and murder are lower in places where
immigration levels are higher.
"The results are
very clear."
Adelman's study with
Lesley Williams Reid, University of Alabama; Gail Markle, Kennesaw State
University; Charles Jaret, Georgia State University; and Saskia Weiss, an
independent scholar, is published in the latest issue of the Journal of
Ethnicity in Criminal Justice.
"Facts are
critical in the current political environment," said Adelman. "The
empirical evidence in this study and other related research shows little
support for the notion that more immigrants lead to more crime."
Previous research,
based on arrest and offense data, has shown that, overall, foreign-born
individuals are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans,
according to Adelman.
For the current study,
the authors stepped back from the study of individual immigrants and instead
explored whether larger scale immigration patterns in communities could be tied
to increases in crime due to changes in cities, such as fewer economic
opportunities or the claim that immigrants displace domestic workers from jobs.
The authors drew a
sample of 200 metropolitan areas as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau and used
census data and uniform crime reporting data from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation for a 40-year period from 1970 to 2010.
"This is a study
across time and across place and the evidence is clear," said Adelman.
"We are not claiming that immigrants are never involved in crime. What we
are explaining is that communities experiencing demographic change driven by
immigration patterns do not experience significant increases in any of the
kinds of crime we examined. And in many cases, crime was either stable or
actually declined in communities that incorporated many immigrants."
Adelman says the
relationship between immigration and crime is complex and more research needs
to be done, but this research supports other scholarly conclusions that
immigrants, on the whole, have a positive effect on American social and
economic life.
"It's important
to base our public policies on facts and evidence rather than ideologies and
baseless claims that demonize particular segments of the U.S. population
without any facts to back them up," said Adelman.