The thought of arriving immigrants in any host country has been accompanied by reactions of exclusion, and continues to expand throughout the years. During any social illness, immigrants tend to be the first to be held responsible by their recipient societies. Most crimes are associated with immigrants due to the fact that they may not posses the same socio-economics status as natives. Another contributing factor is the media that conducts numerous stories that highlight the image of immigrant crimes to recall the alleged difference between native and foreign born. Undoubtedly, the correlation between immigration and crime has become one of the most controversial discussions in current society. As we enter a new era, immigrants will have more impact on society than ever before (Feldmeyer, 2009). There can be numerous reasons to believe immigrants are more prone to commit crimes, for example, they have to learn to adapt into the cultural traits and social patterns of the harboring country, as natives do not (Desmond & Kubrin, 2009). However, despite such claims, empirical studies have revealed that immigrants are understated in criminal statistics. Throughout the years many texts and scholarly articles have been published further analyzing and proving that immigrants are less prone to committing crimes than their native peers. Furthermore, researchers examine the reason as to why immigrants are weighed as a whole even though ethnic groups among immigrants have different rates of crime. For example, Hispanic immigrants are far more prone to commit crimes than a Japanese immigrant. This makes it unfair to consider that because a Japanese is an immigrant, they are also more prone to commit crimes. Much like in the past, the publ... ... middle of paper ... ...untries. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 52,115-131 http://cos.sagepub.com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/content/52/1-2/114 Desmond, S. A., & Kubrin, C. E. (2009). THE POWER OF PLACE: Immigrant communities and adolescent violence, The Sociological Quarterly, 50, 581-607 http://www.gwu.edu/~soc/docs/Kubrin/Immig_Communities.pdf Feldmeyer, B. (2009). Immigration and violence: The offsetting effects of immigrant concentration on Latino violence. Social Science Research, 38, 717-731 http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/tmp/9506051508484483171.pdf Nielsen, A. L., & Martinez, R. (2011). Nationality, immigrant groups, and arrest: Examining the diversity of arrestees for urban violent crime. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 27, 343-360 http://ccj.sagepub.com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/content/27/3/342
Bucerius, Sandra and Tonry, Michael. The Oxford Handbook of Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.
Wright, J. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice. (p. 9.1). San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUCRJ201.12.1/sections/sec9.1
The book was well organized with the first chapter introducing the international nature of racial and ethnicity issues, each of the next chapters focusing on issues involving race, ethnicity, and crime in a specific country, and the last chapter summarizing these findings and discussing the future surrounding these topics. Throughout the book, Gabbidon presents salient points that explain the inequalities and injustices that are present in these modern day countries. Gabbidon validates his theory by providing historical context, current population statistics, criminal justice statistics, and an analysis of crime and race relations for each country profiled. The data presented aligned well with Gabbidon’s objectives and supported his proposed theories. Gabbidon identified the international breadth of the problems involving race, ethnicity, and crime in the selected countries and provided a detailed explanation of the origins of injustice and inequality due to the colonial
Research from Hanser and Gomila (2015) revealed that most minority groups “live in lower-class neighborhoods in large urban centers where the greatest concentration of law enforcement officers exists” (p. 340). Racial disparity and discrimination are common among juveniles who are born in the United States from immigrant parents, particularly those residing in lower-class neighborhoods where crime is prevalent. Minority juveniles will also find themselves facing various difficulties and challenges
Immigration and crime can often time combine due to the laws that are continuously created. The membership theory presented by Juliet Stumpf in chapter 2 of Governing Immigration Through Crime. Membership theory proposes that a person’s rights and privileges are only obtainable to those who are a part of a social contract with the government (Dowling & Inda, 2013, p. 60). It is believed that positive actions can occur when this takes place. Now, the membership theory uses two tools of the sovereign state for this to be achieved: the power to punish and the power to express moral condemnation (Dowling & Inda,2013, p. 60). When applying this belief to immigration law, legal and illegal have stringent explanations between them. As stated
Seigal, L. J., & Worrall, J. L. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
...a [Lecture]. SSCI 1000 Introduction to Criminal Justice. University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Retrieved November 18, 2013
Natives who oppose the entrance of immigrants into their nation offer several reasons in favor of the abolishment of immigrants. They argue that immigrants are the reasons for drug trafficking, when over 80% of drug traffickers are natives. They argue that immigration increases crime rate, yet most studies comparing crime rates and
Schmalleger, Frank, Criminal Justice A Brief Introduction, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Education Inc. , 2010, Page 387
Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.
This argument focuses on the relationship with illegal residents; unauthorized migrants living within the U.S. may not report crimes to the police for fear of deportation, effectively decreasing the recorded rate of crime within high immigrant concentration neighborhoods – creating artificially low crime rates for affected populations. Despite these claims, there is little to no evidence to suggest that these reporting biases exist and have a serious effect on crime rates – chiefly, homicide rates. A second argument is that foreigners – both authorized and unauthorized alike – are apt to be deported in the case of their committing a violent crime, suggesting that the incarceration rates for immigrants may be artificially low as well. The data in Sampson’s research is designed to circumvent these issues by relying on testimony from neighborhood residents – both legal and illegal – rather than police statistics. Sampson concludes that “police arrest biases or undercounts can’t explain the fact that first generation immigrants self-report lower violence than the second generation, which in turn reports less than the third generation.”
According to O’Brien (1985) The Uniform Crime Reporting system (UCR) was developed in the 1920’s in order to create a system that would report crime uniformly across the many different jurisdictions in the United States. For the purpose of this paper I am going to discuss the debate between the relationships of the overrepresentation of minorities in crime statics and if the results are biased based on race. There is a debate regarding the accuracy of the statistics provided by official data resources such as UCR and NIBRS in regards to racial disparities. The fact that racial or social class bias does have an impact on what crimes are reported and the neighborhoods that have the highest police presence does lead inevitably to an overrepresentation of minorities when viewing crime statics as quantitative data points. Official data leads you to believe that a criminal in the United States can be described as being urban, lower class, African American male between the ages of 13 and 20 years old (Feldmeyer, Lecture 1/15/2014). Why is this information important? I believe it leads to bias in the way neighborhoods are policed, the way police stop and search vehicles, the people that police view as being “suspects” and are subjugated to stop and frisk. I also believe that this stereotype plays a part into the sort of people that are reported for being or acting “suspicious”. This can impact that perceived description of the offender when a victim is filling out a police report. All factors help lead to establish some sort of bias that inevitably can lead to disproportionate representation of minorities in UCR statistical data.
Schmalleger, F. (2009), Prentice Hall, Publication. Criminal Justice Today: An introductory Text for the 21st century
While people immigrating to the United States are often searching for better economic situations or to be reunited with family members, they are instead thrown into a system that has had a history of retaliating against them for searching for a better life. The United States has always had a difficult relationship with immigration, both needing it to promote growth in economic and demographic spheres while also using it as an easy scapegoat for many of the country’s problems. Once within the U.S. borders, immigrants are expected to conform, or assimilate, to the country’s standards and ideals, which also includes adapting to the racialized system that controls much of the politics and day to day life of American citizens. Suddenly, immigrants
Legal Information Institute. (2010, August 9). Retrieved February 17, 2012, from Cornell University Law School: http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/criminal_law