Illegal Immigration and Violent Crime Rates in the United States, 2009-2014

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinkinson Smith
Author(s):  
Christian Gunadi

Abstract Approximately 11 million undocumented individuals live in the United States. At the same time, there are concerns that the presence of undocumented immigrants may contribute to an increase in crime rates. In this article, I examine the institutionalization rate of undocumented immigrants and quantify the change in crime rates attributable to undocumented immigration. The analysis yields a few main results. First, despite possessing characteristics usually associated with crime, undocumented immigrants are 33% less likely to be institutionalized compared to US natives. Second, there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants who have spent more time in the USA are more likely to be institutionalized compared to those who have been in the USA for a shorter time. There is evidence, however, that arriving at a younger age is associated with higher institutionalization rate. Finally, overall property and violent crime rates across US states are not statistically significantly increased by undocumented immigration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Richard Fast

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of the effect of education on violent crime, specifically in the U.S. state of Alabama. The main purpose of the research is to determine whether more education leads to a decrease in the rate of violent crime. Systematization of the literary sources and approaches for reducing the violent crime rate indicate that increasing education, particularly the number of people with at least a high school or associate’s degree, can be one influential tool in cutting crime. The relevance of this scientific problem analysis is that Alabama has one of the highest violent crime rates in the United States according to crime watch sources, and Alabama residents desire safer neighborhoods. Investigation of what effect education has on crime in the paper is carried out in the following logical sequence: Introduction, literature review, data and analysis, and conclusion. Methodological tools of the research methods include econometric analysis using log-linear, linear-log, and log-log models covering population, educational attainment, violent crime rate, and unemployment rate of each county over five years: 2011-2015. The object of research are all the counties of Alabama, because namely they have some of the highest crime rates in the United States. Coincidentally, Alabama also has one of the lowest educational attainment rates in the country; the average American has more years of formal schooling than the average Alabama resident, and the crime rates of all other U.S. states compared to Alabama reflect this important fact. The paper presents the results of an empirical analysis of how more education impacted the violent crime rate in that state, which showed that, with one exception, more years of schooling does indeed result in less violent crime. The research empirically confirms and theoretically proves that, in the majority of cases, a better educated populace is less likely to commit violent crime.The results of the research can be useful for educators, law enforcement, and criminal justice practitioners.


Author(s):  
David A. Gerber

American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction traces three massive waves of immigration from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and analyzes the nature of immigration as a purposeful, structured activity, attitudes supporting or hostile to immigration, policies and laws regulating immigration, and the nature of and prospects for assimilation. There have been some dramatic developments since 2011, including the crisis along the southwestern border and the intense conflict over illegal immigration. The population of the United States has diverse sources: territorial acquisition through conquest and colonialism, the slave trade, and voluntary immigration. Many Americans value the memory of immigrant ancestors, and are sentimentally inclined to immigrant strivings. Alongside this sits the perception that immigration destabilizes social order, cultural coherence, job markets, and political alignments. The nearly 250 years of American nationhood has been characterized by both support for openness to immigration and embrace of a cosmopolitan formulation of American identity and for restrictions and assertions of belief in a core Anglo-American national character.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kolawole Ogundari

Purpose The cyclical behavior of US crime rates reflects the dynamics of crime in the country. This paper aims to investigate the US's club convergence of crime rates to provide insights into whether the crime rates increased or decreased over time. The paper also analyzes the factors influencing the probability of states converging to a particular convergence club of crime. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on balanced panel data from all 50 states and the district of Columbia on violent and property crime rates covering 1976–2019. This yields a cross-state panel of 2,244 observations with 55 time periods and 51 groups. In addition, the author used a club clustering procedure to investigate the convergence hypothesis in the study. Findings The empirical results support population convergence of violent crime rates. However, the evidence that supports population convergence of property crime rates in the study is not found. Further analysis using the club clustering procedure shows that property crime rates converge into three clubs. The existence of club convergence in property crime rates means that the variation in the property crime rates tends to narrow among the states within each of the clubs identified in the study. Analysis based on an ordered probit model identifies economic, geographic and human capital factors that significantly drive the state's convergence club membership. Practical implications The central policy insight from these results is that crime rates grow slowly over time, as evident by the convergence of violent crime and club convergence of property crime in the study. Moreover, the existence of club convergence of property crime is an indication that policies to mitigate property crime might need to target states within each club. This includes the efforts to use state rather than national crime-fighting policies. Social implications As crimes are committed at the local level, this study's primary limitation is the lack of community-level data on crime and other factors considered. Analysis based on community-level data might provide a better representation of crime dynamics. However, the author hopes to consider this as less aggregated data are available to use in future research. Originality/value The paper provides new insights into the convergence of crime rates using the club convergence procedure in the USA. This is considered an improvement to the methods used in the previous studies.


Author(s):  
Mathias Risse

This chapter examines the relationship between immigration and collective ownership of the earth, and whether the physical aspect of immigration provides constraints on immigration policy. The fact that the earth is originally collectively owned must affect how communities can regulate access to what they occupy. The chapter first considers an account of relative over- and underuse of original resources before discussing illegal immigration in the United States, using a parallel to the civil law notion of “adverse possession” to argue that, under certain conditions, illegal immigration is morally unobjectionable. It then formulates conditions under which it would be reasonable for co-owners to refrain from entering certain regions, even though they would violate no duties of justice by doing so. This proposal is part of the overall approach to global justice that pluralist internationalism develops.


Circulation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shreya Rao ◽  
Amy E Hughes ◽  
Colby Ayers ◽  
Sandeep R Das ◽  
Ethan A Halm ◽  
...  

Introduction: CV mortality has declined over 4 decades in the U.S. However, whether declines have been uniformly experienced across U.S. counties, and predictors of CV mortality trajectory are not known. Methods: County-level mortality data from 1980-2014 was obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics. We used a ClustMix approach to identify 3 distinct county phenogroups based on mortality trajectory. Adjusted multinomial logistic regression models were constructed to evaluate the associations between county-level characteristics (demographic, social, and health status) and CV mortality trajectory-based phenogroups. Results: Among 3,133 counties, there were parallel declines in CV mortality in all groups (Fig.1A). High-mortality counties were located in the South and parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys (Fig. 1B). County phenogroups varied significantly in social characteristics such as non-white proportion (low vs. high mortality: 12% vs. 27%), high-school education (11% vs. 20%), and violent crime rates (.01 vs. 0.3/100 population). Disparities in health factors were also observed with higher rates of smoking, obesity, and diabetes in the high (vs. low) mortality groups. A substantial collinearity was observed between social and health factors. In adjusted analysis, social, environmental, and health characteristics explained 56% variance in the county-level CV mortality trajectory. Education status (OR [95% CI]=12.4 [9.4-16.3]), violent crime rates (OR [95% CI] =1.6 [1.3-1.9]), and smoking (OR [95% CI] = 3.9 [3.1- 4.9]) were the strongest predictors of high mortality trajectory phenogroup membership (ref: low mortality). Conclusions: Despite a decline in CV mortality, disparities at the county-level have persisted over the past 4 decades largely driven by differences in social characteristics and smoking prevalence. This highlights the need for multi-domain interventions focusing on safety, education and public health to improve county-level disparities in CV health.


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