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Kubrin accepts Stockholm Prize in Criminology

Jun
25
2026
June 25, 2026
Charis speaking at podium in Stockholm

Charis Kubrin, above, delivers a lecture at Stockholm City Hall. Inset image: Queen Silvia of Sweden presents Kubrin with the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. Photos by Johanna Hanno

Professor delivers keynote lecture on immigration and crime


UC Irvine Chancellor's Professor of Criminology, Law and Society Charis E. Kubrin traveled to Stockholm earlier this month to formally accept what many consider criminology's equivalent of the Nobel Prize and used the occasion to deliver a sweeping, data-driven argument that the link between immigration and crime is “a myth that the evidence has never supported.”

Queen and KubrinKubrin received the 2026 Stockholm Prize in Criminology on June 9 at Stockholm City Hall, where H.M. Queen Silvia of Sweden presented the award to her and fellow laureate Mark W. Lipsey of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute. The ceremony, followed by a gala dinner in the building's famous Golden Hall, was the centerpiece of the Stockholm Criminology Symposium, a three-day gathering that drew more than 500 criminologists, researchers and law practitioners from around the world to discuss new crime-fighting strategies.

Prize winners are chosen by an independent international jury to honor research that reduces crime and promotes human rights.

In her prize lecture, titled “Evidence First: What the Data Really Say about Immigration and Crime,” Kubrin traced her unlikely path into the area of research to a 2006 newspaper op-ed by sociologist Robert Sampson that argued immigration was an overlooked driver of the dramatic U.S. crime drop of the 1990s.

“I knew nothing about this topic but was intrigued by the findings,” Kubrin told the audience. “I became even more intrigued when I learned Sampson was receiving plenty of hate mail for his op-ed. The data were speaking for themselves, it just seemed like nobody wanted to listen.”

What she found when she began digging surprised her.

Studies consistently showed immigrants were less crime-prone than their native-born peers — yet nearly three-quarters of Americans surveyed believed immigration and crime went hand-in-hand. That gap between evidence and public perception has driven her research ever since.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, Kubrin has spent nearly 20 years publishing dozens of individual studies, a landmark meta-analysis, and a co-authored book with Graham Ousey, Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock, which synthesizes the full body of scholarship.

Summarizing her findings before the Stockholm audience, Kubrin was unequivocal: “The consistency with which studies find that areas with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower rates of crime is simply stunning.”

Her key conclusions, drawn from the collective literature:

  • Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are generally less crime-prone than their native-born counterparts, with lower involvement in violent crime, property crime, and lower institutionalization rates. 
  • At the community level, immigration is not associated with increased crime rates. 
  • Restrictive immigration enforcement policies, including those that criminalize undocumented status or task local police with immigration enforcement, do not enhance public safety and may in fact increase harm — damaging police-community trust, enabling racial profiling, and leaving behind children who suffer psychological trauma when parents are deported.
  • And, sanctuary policies that limit local officials' involvement in federal immigration enforcement, are not associated with higher crime rates.

Kubrin brought a personal dimension to her lecture, sharing an email from a UCI undergraduate majoring in criminology, law and society, whose mother is an immigrant.

“Everything I have, everything I am becoming, is because of my mother. Now, I am the most terrified I have ever been, for my family, for my mother,” the student wrote.

“I carry this heaviness with my students,” Kubrin told the audience.

The moment underscored why she created UCI's undergraduate course “Immigration and Crime in a Global Context,” the first of its kind at the university which she described as keeping her “grounded” and providing “a humanizing touch” amid mountains of data.

Looking ahead, Kubrin called on fellow researchers to do more than publish findings. 

“The work is not done when the science is done,” she said, quoting a panelist she recently encountered at a firearms research conference. “Science should serve society.”

She is working to sharpen her own policy impact through fellowships from the American Sociological Association’s Policy Outreach Program and the University of California Washington Center, which are helping her learn to communicate research to legislators and connect with think tanks and policy organizations.

Her message to policymakers was direct: stop focusing on immigrant crime and identify the real challenges — whether gender-based violence, gun violence, or corporate fraud.

“Let’s stop the handwringing about ‘immigrant crime,’ identify the real crime problem and go from there,” she said.

For Kubrin, accepting the Stockholm Prize was a capstone and a call to action.

As she put it in Stockholm: “Healthy democracies benefit from good social science and social science benefits from democratic freedoms. When democracies ignore the kind of evidence social science produces, it is at the people’s peril.”

— Mimi Ko Cruz

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Department Affiliation
Criminology, Law & Society
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