Countering the false narrative of immigrant-driven crime

May 2017

Every time there's a highly-publicized story of a person in the U.S. illegally committing a crime, the common narrative of immigrant-driven crime grows stronger. But that narrative is false, Criminology, Law and Society Professor Charis Kubrin told the Desert Sun.

"I can’t even begin to tell you the level of frustration that I and my colleagues who do research in this area are feeling,” Kubrin said. “There are very few areas in our field where the findings are so consistent and the immigration-crime relationship is one of them.”

Kubrin recently examined 20 years' of studies that looked at the relationship between immigration and crime. The conclusion? Immigration to cities results in either no change in crime, or a reduction in crime. But some politicians still base their views on anecdotes of immigrants as criminals.

“That is problematic, drawing policy based on anecdotal data,” Kubrin said.

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