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Abstract
The topic of ‘illegal’ immigration is currently the focus of intense ideological and policy debate in the United States. A common assertion is that those without legal immigration status are disproportionately involved in criminal offending relative to other foreign-born populations. The current study examines the long-term recidivism patterns of a group of male removable aliens compared to those foreign-born with legal authorisation to be present in the Unites States. The sample includes 1297 foreign-born males released from the Los Angeles County Jail during a 1-month period in 2002, and the follow-up period extends through 2011. Using three measures of rearrest and a rigorous counterfactual modelling approach, we find no statistically significant differences between the two groups in likelihood, frequency, or timing of first rearrest over 9 years. The findings do not lend support to arguments that removable aliens pose a disproportionate risk of repeat involvement in local criminal justice systems.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the California Department of Justice Division of California Justice Information Services, and Dr Greg Ridgeway. We also acknowledge the anonymous peer reviewers whose thoughtful comments helped improve the quality of this article.
Notes
1. Mears, “The Immigration-Crime Nexus”; Ousey and Kubrin, “Exploring the Connection”; Wang, “Undocumented Immigrants as Perceived”; Warner, “The Social Construction.”
2. Wortham, Mortimer, and Allard, “Mexicans as Model Minorities.”
3. Reyna, Dobria, and Wetherell, “The Complexity and Ambivalence”; Timberlake et al., “Who “They” Are Matters.”
4. Ackerman and Furman, “The Criminalization of Immigration”; Higgins, Gabbidon, and Martin, “The Role of Race/Ethnicity”; Rumbaut, “Undocumented Immigration and Rates”; Wang, “Undocumented Immigrants as Perceived.”
5. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS Policy Manual. ‘Deportation’ and ‘deportable’ have been relatively recently replaced with the terms ‘removal’ and ‘removable’ in federal immigration terminology. While the term ‘immigrant’ is used broadly in the academic literature and popular contexts, ‘immigrant’ technically refers to any foreign-born person who has been granted the right to reside permanently in the United States. Therefore, an ‘immigrant’ by definition has current legal immigration status. ‘Alien’ is the proper technical term for any individual who is not a US citizen or US national. An alien may or may not have current legal immigration status.
6. Martinez and Lee, “On Immigration and Crime.”
7. Rumbaut, “Undocumented Immigration and Rates.”
8. Passel, The Size and Characteristics.
9. Wang, “Undocumented Immigrants as Perceived.”
10. Ibid.
11. Costanzo et al., “Evaluating Components of International”; Warren and Passel, “Count of the Uncountable.”
12. Passel and Cohn, Unauthorized Immigrant Totals Rise.
13. Colby and Ortman, Projections of the Size.
14. Zong and Batalova, Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants.
15. Ibid.
16. Foreman and Monger, Nonimmigrant Admissions to the United States.
17. Baker and Rytina, Estimates of the Unauthorized.
18. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, ICE Enforcement and Removal.
19. General Accounting Office, 2010 Census: Communications Campaign.
20. For example, Akins, Rumbaut, and Stansfield, “Immigration, Economic Disadvantage”; Butcher and Piehl, “Crime, Corrections, and California”; Hagan and Palloni, “Immigration and Crime”; Ousey and Kubrin, “Exploring the Connection”; Reid et al., “The Immigration-Crime Relationship”; Stowell et al., “Immigration and Crime Drop”; Wadsworth, “Is Immigration Responsible?”
21. For example, Butcher and Piehl, “The Role of Deportation”; Butcher and Piehl, “Crime, Corrections, and California”; Hagan and Palloni, “Sociological Criminology”; Kposowa, Adams, and Tsunokai, “Citizenship Status and Arrest.”
22. For example, Desmond and Kubrin, “The Power of Place”; Morenoff and Astor, “Immigrant Assimilation and Crime”; Rumbaut, “Undocumented Immigration”; Sampson, Morenoff, and Raudenbush, “Social Anatomy.”
23. Lee and Martinez, “Immigration Reduces Crime”, 3.
24. Martinez and Lee, “On Immigration and Crime.”
25. Sampson and Bean, “Cultural Mechanisms”; Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime.”
26. Stowell et al., “Immigration and Crime Drop.”
27. Kposowa, Adams, and Tsunokai, “Citizenship Status and Arrest.”
28. Koper et al., “Effects of Local Immigration.”
29. Barak, Voices of Latino/a Immigrants.
30. FAIR, Illegal Aliens.
31. Stowell, “Addition by Subtraction?”
32. Treyger, “No Evidence.”
33. Mears, “The Immigration-Crime Nexus”; Robinson, “Ecological Correlations.”
34. Sampson, Morenoff, and Raudenbush, “Social Anatomy.”
35. U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General, Cooperation of SCAAP Recipients.
36. Pennell, Curtis, and Tayman, Impact of Illegal Immigration.
37. Hickman, Suttorp, and Wong, Deportable Aliens Released.
38. Hickman and Suttorp, “Are Deportable Aliens?”
39. Johnson, “Religious Programs and Recidivism”; Kurlychek, Bushway, and Brame, “Long-Term Crime Desistance”; Maltz, Recidivism; Ostermann, “Active Supervision”; Worrall, Crime Control in America.
40. Nagin and Land, “Age, Criminal Careers.”
41. see also Barnett, Blumstein, and Farrington, “A Prospective Test.”
42. Kitchener, Schmidt, and Glaser, “How Persistent?”
43. See note 38 above.
44. See note 38 above.
45. For a complete description, see Hickman, Suttorp, and Wong, Deportable Aliens Released.
46. Hickman, Suttorp, and Wong, Deportable Aliens Released; Raymond et al., Identifying Deportable Aliens.
47. Long, Regression Models for Categorical.
48. McCaffrey, Ridgeway, and Morral, “Propensity Score Estimation”; Ridgeway, “Assessing the Effect”; Rosenbaum, “Model-Based Direct Adjustment.”
49. McCaffrey, Ridgeway, and Morral, “Propensity Score Estimation”; Wong and Schonlau, “Does Bully Victimization?”
50. Rosenbaum and Rubin, “Reducing the Bias.”
51. Bang and Robins, “Doubly Robust Estimation.”
52. Rao and Scott, “On Chi-Squared Tests.”
53. See note 38 above.
54. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Removal Statistics.
55. Taxin, “Immigrants Plead for End”; Harmon, “Undocumented Immigrants in Jail.”
56. Office of the Inspector General, The Performance of 287g Agreements.
57. See note 38 above; Hickman, Wong, and Booth, “Is Previous Removal.”
58. Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss, “Analysis of New York.”
59. Tapia, “Untangling Race and Class.”
60. Elliott, “Lies, Damn Lies”; Pollock et al., “It’s Official.”
61. GAO, Immigration Statistics; Office of Inspector General, Cooperation of SCAAP Recipients. This is the reason that both the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) and the federal immigration’s Institutional Hearing Program rely largely or exclusively on inmate self-reported place of birth in distinguishing native and foreign-born inmates.
62. For example, Akins, Rumbaut, and Stansfield, “Immigration, Economic Disadvantage”; Butcher and Piehl, “Cross-City Evidence”; Graif and Sampson, “Spatial Heterogeneity”; Ousey and Kubrin, “Exploring the Connection.”
63. Rumbaut, “Turning Points.”
64. Ibid.
65. Worrall, Crime Control in America.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jennifer S. Wong
Jennifer S. Wong is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University. Her work employs applied and quantitative methods to study issues of delinquency/crime prevention and intervention, focusing primarily on evaluation and policy analysis in the areas of crime prevention and crime control policy, with a secondary focus on risk factors for delinquency, crime, and recidivism. Her recent work includes systematic reviews and meta-analyses on gang prevention programmes and community-based programmes for at-risk youth, examining the influence of prior deportation on likelihood of recidivism, and examining the impact of early bully victimisation on delinquency.
Laura J. Hickman
Laura J. Hickman is a Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Portland State University and an Adjunct Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation. Her work focuses on evaluating programmes and policy responses to crime and victimisation. Her work in the area of law enforcement and immigration includes leading the RAND evaluation of the Los Angeles County High Intensity Criminal Alien Prosecution programme and the Los Angeles County Foreign Born Jail Inmates Study. She has also published studies on a variety of crime policy-related topics, including assessing factors influencing police recruiting and retention in the post-September 11th environment, the influence of police behaviour on official reporting of repeat victimisation, and the impact of a law enforcement programme to impound vehicles of individuals driving with suspended/revoked licences. Other recent work includes a multi-site outcome evaluation of programmes designed for children exposed to violence.
Marika Suttorp-Booth
Marika Suttorp-Booth is a statistical analyst in the statistical research and consulting group at RAND Corporation. She graduated from the University of California–Los Angeles with a Master’s of Science in Biostatistics. Her current work includes both criminal justice and health research, including an evaluation of the economic cost of drug abuse and the Healthy Passages Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health project. She is also a member of the Southern California Evidence-Based Practice Center.