Why are immigrants' incarceration rates so low?
Subtitle: evidence on selective immigration, deterrence, and deportation
By: Kristin Butcher, Anne Piehl.
Contributors: Piehl, Anne Morrison, 1964-; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- no. 13229.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 13229.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 28
Subjects: Immigrants -- United States -- Social conditions -- Mathematical models; Crime -- Sociological aspects -- United States; United States -- Emigration and immigration -- Economic aspects
Description: The perception that immigration adversely affects crime rates led to legislation in the 1990s that particularly increased punishment of criminal aliens. In fact, immigrants have much lower institutionalization (incarceration) rates than the native born - on the order of one-fifth the rate of natives. More recently arrived immigrants have the lowest relative incarceration rates, and this difference increased from 1980 to 2000. We examine whether the improvement in immigrants' relative incarceration rates over the last three decades is linked to increased deportation, immigrant self-selection, or deterrence. Our evidence suggests that deportation does not drive the results. Rather, the process of migration selects individuals who either have lower criminal propensities or are more responsive to deterrent effects than the average native. Immigrants who were already in the country reduced their relative institutionalization probability over the decades; and the newly arrived immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s seem to be particularly unlikely to be involved in criminal activity, consistent with increasingly positive selection along this dimension.
Notes: "July 2007"

Includes bibliographical references (p. 26-28).

Also available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).