[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/doi10.1086-680935.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Immigration Enforcement Reduce Crime? Evidence from Secure Communities

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas J. Miles
  • Adam B. Cox
Abstract
Prior research investigates whether immigrants commit more crimes than native-born people. Yet the central policy used to regulate immigration--detention and deportation--has received little empirical evaluation. This article studies a recent policy innovation called Secure Communities. This program permits the federal government to check the immigration status of every person arrested by local police and to take the arrestee into federal custody promptly for deportation proceedings. Since its launch, the program has led to a quarter of a million detentions. We utilize the staggered rollout of the program across the country to obtain differences-in-differences estimates of its impact on crime rates. We also use unique counts of the detainees from each county and month to estimate the elasticity of crime with respect to confined immigrants. The results show that the Secure Communities program has had no observable effect on the overall crime rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas J. Miles & Adam B. Cox, 2014. "Does Immigration Enforcement Reduce Crime? Evidence from Secure Communities," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(4), pages 937-973.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/680935
    DOI: 10.1086/680935
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/680935
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/680935
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/680935?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kessler, Daniel P & Levitt, Steven D, 1999. "Using Sentence Enhancements to Distinguish between Deterrence and Incapacitation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 343-363, April.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Sampson, R.J. & Morenoff, J.D. & Raudenbush, S., 2005. "Social anatomy of racial and ethnic disparities in violence," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 95(2), pages 224-232.
    4. Brian Bell & Francesco Fasani & Stephen Machin, 2013. "Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(4), pages 1278-1290, October.
    5. Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Paolo Pinotti, 2015. "Legal Status and the Criminal Activity of Immigrants," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 175-206, April.
    6. Kristin F. Butcher & Anne Morrison Piehl, 1998. "Cross-city evidence on the relationship between immigration and crime," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 457-493.
    7. Aaron Chalfin, 2014. "What is the Contribution of Mexican Immigration to U.S. Crime Rates? Evidence from Rainfall Shocks in Mexico," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 16(1), pages 220-268.
    8. Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2014. "Understanding the Impact of Immigration on Crime," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 16(1), pages 177-219.
    9. Kuziemko, Ilyana & Levitt, Steven D., 2004. "An empirical analysis of imprisoning drug offenders," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2043-2066, August.
    10. Rucker Johnson & Steven Raphael, 2012. "How Much Crime Reduction Does the Marginal Prisoner Buy?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 275-310.
    11. Matthew Freedman & Emily Owens & Sarah Bohn, 2018. "Immigration, Employment Opportunities, and Criminal Behavior," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 117-151, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francesco Fasani, 2018. "Immigrant crime and legal status: evidence from repeated amnesty programs," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 887-914.
    2. Paolo Pinotti, 2017. "Clicking on Heaven's Door: The Effect of Immigrant Legalization on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(1), pages 138-168, January.
    3. Mariani, Fabio & Mercier, Marion, 2021. "Immigration and crime: The role of self-selection and institutions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 538-564.
    4. Rita Maghularia & Silke Uebelmesser, 2019. "Do Immigrants Affect Crime? Evidence from Panel Data for Germany," CESifo Working Paper Series 7696, CESifo.
    5. Kayaoglu, Aysegul, 2022. "Do refugees cause crime?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    6. Monica Langella & Alan Manning, 2019. "Diversity and Neighbourhood Satisfaction," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(624), pages 3219-3255.
    7. Dagnelie, Olivier & Mayda, Anna Maria & Maystadt, Jean-François, 2019. "The labor market integration of refugees in the United States: Do entrepreneurs in the network help?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 257-272.
    8. Dehos, Fabian T., 2021. "The refugee wave to Germany and its impact on crime," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    9. McCully, Brett, 2021. "Immigrants, Legal Status, and Illegal Trade," MPRA Paper 109610, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Knight, Brian & Tribin, Ana, 2023. "Immigration and violent crime: Evidence from the Colombia-Venezuela Border," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    11. Clotilde Mahé & Sergio Parra-Cely, 2021. "Panic? Probing Angst over Immigration and Crime," DEM Discussion Paper Series 21-04, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    12. Zhang, Yinjuejie & Palma, Marco & Xu, Zhicheng, 2016. "Effects of the Alabama HB 56 Immigration Law on Crime: A Synthetic Control Approach," 2016 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2016, San Antonio, Texas 229780, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    13. Maghularia, Rita & Uebelmesser, Silke, 2023. "Do immigrants affect crime? Evidence for Germany," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 486-512.
    14. Nicolás Ajzenman & Patricio Domínguez & Raimundo Undurraga, 2021. "Immigration, crime, and crime (Mis)perceptions," Working Papers 53, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    15. Luca Nunziata, 2015. "Immigration and crime: evidence from victimization data," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(3), pages 697-736, July.
    16. Sandra V. Rozo & Therese Anders & Steven Raphael, 2021. "Deportation, crime, and victimization," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 141-166, January.
    17. Francesco Fasani, 2015. "Understanding the Role of Immigrants’ Legal Status: Evidence from Policy Experiments," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 61(3-4), pages 722-763.
    18. Ryan Abman & Hisham Foad, 2022. "Border Walls and Crime: Evidence From the Secure Fence Act," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 167-197, April.
    19. Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Paolo Pinotti, 2015. "Legal Status and the Criminal Activity of Immigrants," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 175-206, April.
    20. Huang, Yue & Kvasnicka, Michael, 2019. "Immigration and Crimes against Natives: The 2015 Refugee Crisis in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 12469, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/680935. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.