Do Illegal Aliens Have High Crime Rates?

Barry Latzer, Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, has an article in the City Journal with the above headline. The subhead is, "High enough, from what we know, to take measures to secure our borders."

Critics of illegal immigration argue that the crime rates of illegal aliens are higher than those of the American population generally, or at least of legal immigrants. The New York Times has denied that illegals commit more crime than other groups, but the paper bases its claim on a Cato Institute study that relies on questionable data. In fact, nobody can calculate with accuracy the crime rates of illegal immigrants or any other social group unless they have reliable data on the size of the group, and we simply don't know how many illegal aliens there are in the United States.

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The crime of homicide provides the most accurate measure, though, because a much higher proportion of murders are solved by police--around 70 percent--than for any other crime; by contrast, fewer than 15 percent of property offenses lead to an arrest. As a result, we have much more accurate demographics for murderers than for, say, burglars. The indication that illegal aliens commit disproportionate numbers of murders is corroborated by crime rates, shaky though they may be, for 2014 and 2015--the two years for which we have population estimates from Pew and DHS. In 2014, Texas illegal-alien murder-arrest rates were 4.99 per 100,000--56 percent higher than the rates for all other apprehended murderers (3.2 per 100,000). In 2015, the rates were 35 percent higher for illegal aliens (4.2 per 100,000, versus 3.1 per 100,000).

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No amount of crime by those who enter this country unlawfully should be acceptable, because it is "extra" crime that wouldn't occur if our border security were effective. Crime by illegal aliens is costly. The real issue underlying the current public debate is whether the crimes of illegal immigrants are so numerous that they provide a compelling reason, or at least a powerful supporting argument, for urgent spending to secure our southern border. Judging by Texas the answer, though not incontestable, seems to be "yes."

Do Illegal Aliens Have High Crime Rates? curated from Crime and Consequences Blog