aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Immigrants and crime

In the aftermath of the O’Reilly v Rivera verbal slugfest, Salon spoke with professor Robert J. Sampson, chairman of the sociology department at Harvard University and an academic who believes that immigrants “may actually be the secret to decreasing crime in the U.S.” His research shows immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans. From the interview:

In our research, which is based on over 10 years of data collection and analysis of a long-term study in Chicago, our findings tend to be quite similar to other research showing that first-generation immigrants have lower rates of crime, particularly violent crime. In particular, first-generation immigrants, that is, people born outside the country, are much less likely to commit violence, in our data about 45 percent less likely than third-generation immigrants. In turn, second-generation immigrants are about a quarter less likely to commit crime than third-generation.

So, in other words, native Americans, those born here and whose parents are born here, are the most violent and the most criminal.