Immigration Policy

NBER Study: Immigrants and Crime

Recent immigrants aren't as likely to go to prison as native-born Americans, say researchers. This is surprising because based solely on their age distribution, immigrants should have about the same percentage incarcerated as natives. And if education, race and ethnicity are taken into account, immigrants should be jailed at a much higher rate than natives.

Researchers compared institutionalization rates of various groups in the census years 1980 and 1990, focusing on 18-to-40-year-old males, the group most prone to end up behind bars. In this group, 70 percent of those institutionalized in 1980 were there because they had been convicted of a crime; the rest were in mental institutions, hospitals and drug treatment centers.

  • Among native-born men, 1.35 percent were institutionalized in 1980, compared to 0.7 percent of male immigrants; in 1990, the rates were 2.16 percent and 1.49 percent.

  • In 1990 native-born dropouts were 5.9 percent more likely to be incarcerated than college graduates; but for immigrants the difference was only 1.9 percent.

  • By ethnic group, native-born blacks were 6.9 percent more likely to be institutionalized than native-born white non-Hispanics, but immigrant blacks were only 2.9 percent more likely.

  • And the incarceration rate for Asian immigrants was lower than for white non-Hispanic immigrants.

Over time immigrants assimilate to the higher institutionalization rates of the native- born, say researchers, but more recent immigrants appear to do so less quickly than earlier ones. Since youth crime is strongly related to the criminality of family members, this lower imprisonment rate might mean lower criminal activity by immigrants' children.

If natives had the same low probability of being incarcerated as all immigrants, the nation's jails and prisons would have one-third fewer inmates.

Source: David R. Francis, "Recent Immigrants Less Likely to go to Prison than Natives," NBER Digest, January 1998, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Mass. 02138, (617) 868-3900.

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