Prison rates lower for immigrants

Immigrants in California, including those without documents, are "far less likely" than the native-born to end up incarcerated for crimes, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Analyzing prison records, researchers found native-born men in California are incarcerated in state prisons at rates that are 2½ times greater than the foreign-born.

Immigrants are 35 percent of California's adult population, the study notes, but only 17 percent of the state's prison population.

This gap increases when U.S. Census data from county jails and such institutions as halfway houses are included.

The study found that among males ages 18 to 40 -- a group considered most likely to commit crimes -- U.S.-born men are 10 times more likely than immigrants to be imprisoned or jailed.

"There are lots of reasons to be concerned about immigration. But spending your public safety dollars to reduce immigration is not going to have a big impact on public safety," said economist Kristin Butcher, co- author of the study.

The Public Policy Institute of California is a nonpartisan think tank based in San Francisco.

"Immigration is hot right now," Butcher said, with the media and political leaders paying close attention when an illegal immigrant is accused of crimes.

"Calls to curtail immigration, particularly illegal immigration, appeal to public fears about immigrants' involvement in criminal activities," the study says.

Yet those likely to be illegal immigrants also appear to be jailed at lower rates than the native-born, the study found.

Because state prison and census data do not reveal if a person is undocumented, Butcher said, researchers looked at place of birth and citizenship status and identified a specific group to study: Non-citizen Mexican men between 18 and 40, a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally.

The study found U.S.-born men in this same age group were eight times more likely to be in a correctional setting than non-citizen Mexicans.

Butcher called this finding "striking," given that the undocumented are more likely to be young, male and have low levels of education, characteristics generally associated with a higher tendency to commit crime.

Butcher said researchers cross-checked findings by analyzing crime rates in California cities that had experienced the biggest influx of immigrants. An analysis found crime rates in those cities had dropped, on average, between 2000 and 2005.

That finding, Butcher said, "bolstered" researchers' confidence that their results were not skewed, for example, by immigrants avoiding jail by leaving the country.

Butcher said that the public sometimes infers that immigrants "must be more criminal" because 19 percent of federal inmates are foreigners, a figure greater than immigrants' share of the U.S. population. But the federal inmate population, Butcher said, represents only 8 percent of the total U.S. prison population, too small a group from which to draw conclusions.

Ruben Rumbaut, a sociologist at UC Irvine who studies immigration, said politicians often "repeat, like a mantra" that illegal immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crime.

He said the public also often resists believing findings that suggest otherwise, including his own research showing that immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens -- or, paradoxically, their own U.S.-born children and grandchildren.

Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinness was "surprised a little" at Butcher's findings but said "the vast majority of immigrants, including the illegal, are here for a very narrow purpose, which is to make a livelihood and send money to families."

Butcher said her study doesn't try to explain why crime rates are lower among immigrants. But she suggested two reasons. Foreigners with crime records aren't allowed to immigrate legally, she said, and most illegal immigrants enter the United States to work and try to stay clean.

"If you are coming to support your family," she said, "you don't want to get sent back for some graffiti violations."