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Title: Immigration, Crime, and Incarceration in Early Twentieth-Century America

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2009

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Abstract: The major government commissions on immigration and crime in the early twentieth centuryrelied on evidence that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate population data,which led them to present partial and sometimes misleading views of the immigrant-native criminalitycomparison. With improved data and methods, we fi nd that in 1904, prison commitment rates for moreserious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitmentrate for immigrants was higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likelythan natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but this advantage disappears whenone looks at commitments for violent offenses. The time series pattern refl ects a growing gap betweennatives and immigrants at older ages, one that was driven by sharp increases in the commitment ratesof the native-born, while commitment rates for the foreign-born were remarkably stable.

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Authors: Moehling, Carolyn; Piehl, Morrison

Periodical (Full): Demography

Issue: 4

Volume: 46

Pages: 739-763

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Crime and Deviance, Migration and Immigration

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