Assessing the impact of deportable status on sentencing outcomes in a sample of state prisoners

Abstract

Much of the existing discussion surrounding the immigration–crime link has been influenced by public perceptions of the criminality of illegal immigrants. Recent empirical studies, however, suggest that immigrant status may instead operate as a protective factor, shielding immigrants from (serious) criminal offending. Rarely investigated is the extent to which illegal immigration, construed as deportability status, relates to criminal justice sentencing decisions. Using data from a cohort of inmates incarcerated for a new offense during 2008 in a large southern state, this study examines the impact of a federal immigration detainer on sentence length and type, controlling for a variety of legal and extralegal factors. Using propensity score matching, results indicate that inmates with federal immigration detainers received significantly shorter sentences compared to non-deportable inmates. No significant difference was found in the likelihood of receiving a life or death sentence between inmates with and without immigration detainers.

Keywords:

• Immigration
• sentencing
• citizenship status
• deportable
• offending

Notes

1. Identification as illegal includes persons who entered the country illegally or persons who may have entered legally, but their permission to stay has lapsed or been revoked (Hickman and Suttorp 2010; Gonzalez-Barrera and Krogstad 2014).

2. 61 observations were excluded due to missing data.

3. Prior to this correction, the mean sentence length was 3,126.72 days, with a standard deviation of 3661.38 and skewness of 4.15. After logging, the mean logged sentence length was 7.69, with a standard deviation of 0.79 and skewness of 0.66.

4. Due to data limitations, only a count of prior incarcerations was available rather than a measure that incorporated the seriousness of prior offenses.

5. All models were estimated using robust standard errors, clustered based on the inmates’ county of conviction in order to reduce any bias associated with regional differences within the state.

6. Supplemental analysis using a 1-to-1 approach, without replacement, resulted in substantively similar results.