Jailed immigrants show lower risk for criminal behavior than native-born citizens

Research shows that immigrants who are booked into jail have fewer individual risk factors for crime and shorter criminal histories than native-born citizens. This suggests that policies targeting immigrants as inherent public safety threats are based on inaccurate stereotypes. The findings were published in the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.

Public conversations in the United States routinely depict immigrants as an acute danger to public safety. Rhetoric surrounding border security often paints people entering the country as potential perpetrators of violence. Yet sociological studies consistently contradict this narrative. Research shows that immigrants are actually less likely to violate laws than people born in the United States.

Scholars commonly refer to this phenomenon as the immigrant paradox. Individuals relocating from other countries often display better health and behavioral outcomes than native-born citizens. This occurs even though immigrants frequently face severe economic disadvantages and the strict psychological toll of adapting to a new society. Both low socioeconomic status and severe stress are usually strong predictors of rule-breaking behavior.

While the broader population trends are well documented, the specific psychological mechanisms remain less understood. Past studies have largely focused on macro-level data, like neighborhood crime rates. Researchers have spent less time evaluating the individual characteristics that predict whether someone will commit an offense.

Criminal psychologists refer to these individual traits as criminogenic risk factors. The justice system often focuses on a cluster of primary traits known as the central eight. These mental and behavioral markers include an established history of illegal behavior, an antisocial personality pattern, and an antisocial thinking style that rationalizes breaking the rules.

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The remaining central factors evaluate a person’s immediate environment and daily life. They look at issues like socializing with rule-breaking peers, struggling with substance abuse, and experiencing deep family relationship problems. They also assess educational or employment difficulties and a general lack of positive recreational hobbies.

A team of researchers wanted to know how these individual predictors differ based on a person’s immigration status. University of Texas at El Paso psychology researcher Jennifer Eno Louden led the project to evaluate people already entangled in the legal system. She worked alongside Theodore R. Curry, Betel Hernandez, Elena Vaudreuil, and Osvaldo F. Morera. They sought to provide an objective behavioral profile of jail detainees in a border community.

The researchers conducted two separate studies in El Paso, Texas. This region borders Mexico and sees heavy involvement from state and federal border enforcement agencies. For the first study, the team acquired booking records from the local county jail. They analyzed data from more than five thousand successive intakes over several months.

The team looked at the most serious current charges holding each person in custody. They also reviewed the results of standard pretrial risk assessments conducted by jail staff. Because the facility does not formally record immigration status, the team estimated this based on each person’s recorded country of birth and country of citizenship.

They divided the data into three groups. These groups included individuals born in the United States, immigrants from Mexico, and immigrants from other countries. The researchers then compared the formal criminal histories across all three categories.

They found that both groups of immigrants had less extensive criminal histories than their native-born peers. Mexican immigrants showed lower rates of drug abuse charges compared to the other two groups. However, Mexican immigrants experienced higher rates of arrests related to driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

When looking at the overall pretrial risk evaluations, native-born individuals scored highest. They were more likely to have prior felony convictions and were more likely to be under some form of legal supervision. Native-born citizens also exhibited higher rates of housing instability compared to the immigrant groups.

The second study aimed to build on the first by gathering detailed personal information through direct interviews. Over a period of eighteen months, the team randomly selected and approached individuals recently booked into the same jail. They successfully interviewed nearly three hundred participants.

Participants were grouped into three categories based on self-reported information. These groups were native-born citizens, documented immigrants, and undocumented immigrants. Trained research assistants administered a widely used psychological evaluation to assess the eight central risk factors for crime. The interviewers also questioned participants about their lifetime criminal actions and their degree of cultural adaptation.

The interview results paralleled the findings from the initial public records review. Undocumented immigrants had the oldest average age for their first legal offense. Native-born citizens and documented immigrants reported engaging in a higher total number of crimes throughout their lives.

When measuring the eight central risk factors, native-born citizens scored the highest. Documented immigrants scored lower, and undocumented immigrants scored the lowest out of the three groups.

Undocumented individuals showed lower risk scores on seven out of the eight evaluation measures. The only category where they scored higher than native-born citizens was in education and employment difficulties. Native-born citizens scored highest in categories measuring antisocial behavior, substance abuse, and associating with problematic peers.

The formal charges holding these individuals in jail also varied widely by group. Native-born citizens and documented immigrants faced higher rates of violent offenses and property crimes. Undocumented immigrants were primarily locked up for immigration-related offenses like illegal entry.

The researchers also examined the process of acculturation. This metric evaluates how strongly an individual adopts the mainstream culture of a new country. They found a positive association between adapting to United States culture and carrying increased behavioral risk. Participants who indicated a stronger orientation toward mainstream American culture had elevated risk scores across almost all categories.

Conversely, maintaining a strong connection to the culture of their origin country was associated with lower risk. The researchers suggest that rapid cultural adaptation might expose individuals to new psychological stressors. It might also connect them to native-born peers who encourage and support rule-breaking behaviors.

The researchers mapped out several caveats regarding their work. Because all the data came from people booked into a specific county jail, the findings might not generalize to individuals living freely in the community. Changes in local policing practices or officer bias could also affect who ends up in the jail population in the first place.

Relying on self-reported interview data carries the risk that participants will understate their past criminal behaviors. The researchers attempted to minimize this issue by conducting the interviews in private areas. They also enacted strict confidentiality protocols to make participants feel comfortable answering honestly.

Another limitation involves relying on official United States records in the first study, which might omit crimes committed in other countries. The team designed the second study to capture international histories through direct questioning, which helped support the initial findings. The researchers stress that their results do not reflect community-wide crime rates, but rather focus squarely on individuals already inside the justice system.

Future studies should investigate how these specific individual traits predict repeat offending among minority communities. Risk assessment tools used by judges and parole boards might need adjustments to reflect the actual behaviors of immigrant populations. The authors suggest that criminal psychological risk might take different forms depending on a person’s cultural background.

The findings suggest that border enforcement strategies based on the assumption that immigrants threaten public safety are misguided. Subjecting immigrant communities to heightened police scrutiny diverts resources away from people who actually possess high psychological risk factors. Policies focusing solely on a person’s legal residency status fail to address the true drivers of criminal behavior.

The study, “Criminogenic Risk Factors Among Immigrants in the U.S.-México Border Region,” was authored by Jennifer Eno Louden, Theodore R. Curry, Betel Hernandez, Elena Vaudreuil, and Osvaldo F. Morera.