Immigration: America's nineteenth century "law and order problem"? / Howard Bodenhorn, Carolyn M. Moehling, Anne Morrison Piehl.

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Bodenhorn, Howard

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TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w16266.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2010.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: Past studies of the empirical relationship between immigration and crime during the first major wave of immigration have focused on violent crime in cities and have relied on data with serious limitations regarding nativity information. We analyze administrative data from Pennsylvania prisons, with high quality information on nativity and demographic characteristics. The latter allow us to construct incarceration rates for detailed population groups using U.S. Census data. The raw gap in incarceration rates for the foreign and native born is large, in accord with the extremely high concern at the time about immigrant criminality. But adjusting for age and gender greatly narrows that observed gap. Particularly striking are the urban/rural differences. Immigrants were concentrated in large cities where reported crime rates were higher. However, within rural counties, the foreign born had much higher incarceration rates than the native born. The interaction of nativity with urban residence explains much of the observed aggregate differentials in incarceration rates. Finally, we find that the foreign born, especially the Irish, consistently have higher incarceration rates for violent crimes, but from 1850 to 1860 the natives largely closed the gap with the foreign born for property offenses.

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Previous	nber w16263 Predictive Regressions: A Present-value Approach /	nber w16264 Globalization, the Business Cycle, and Macroeconomic Monitoring /	nber w16265 The Establishment-Level Behavior of Vacancies and Hiring /	nber w16266 Immigration: America's nineteenth century "law and order problem"? /	nber w16267 The Evolution of Brand Preferences: Evidence from Consumer Migration /	nber w16268 Taxes, Permits, and Climate Change /	nber w16269 International Aspects of the Great Depression and the Crisis of 2007: Similarities, Differences, and Lessons /	Next

August 2010.

Past studies of the empirical relationship between immigration and crime during the first major wave of immigration have focused on violent crime in cities and have relied on data with serious limitations regarding nativity information. We analyze administrative data from Pennsylvania prisons, with high quality information on nativity and demographic characteristics. The latter allow us to construct incarceration rates for detailed population groups using U.S. Census data. The raw gap in incarceration rates for the foreign and native born is large, in accord with the extremely high concern at the time about immigrant criminality. But adjusting for age and gender greatly narrows that observed gap. Particularly striking are the urban/rural differences. Immigrants were concentrated in large cities where reported crime rates were higher. However, within rural counties, the foreign born had much higher incarceration rates than the native born. The interaction of nativity with urban residence explains much of the observed aggregate differentials in incarceration rates. Finally, we find that the foreign born, especially the Irish, consistently have higher incarceration rates for violent crimes, but from 1850 to 1860 the natives largely closed the gap with the foreign born for property offenses.