The Power of Place Revisited

• Author: Charis E. Kubrin,Scott A. Desmond
• Published date: 01 October 2015
• Date: 01 October 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1541204014547590
• Published By: Sage Publications, Inc.
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Power of Place Revisited:

Why Immigrant Communities

Have Lower Levels of

Adolescent Violence

Charis E. Kubrin

1

and Scott A. Desmond

2

Abstract

Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are

some of the safest places around. Studies repeatedly find that neighborhood immigrant concen-

tration is either negatively associated with crime and delinquency or not related to crime and

delinquency at all. Less well understood, however, is why this is the case. A critical limitation of

existing research is the exclusion of measures that capture the intervening processes by which

immigrant concentration influences crime and delinquency. The current study begins to address this

gap in the literature. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to

examine the relationship between neighborhood immigrant concentration and adolescent violence

and to assess the extent to which social capital and personal and vicarious victimization may account

for this relationship. Contrary to our expectations, social capital and personal and vicarious victi-

mization do not mediate the relationship between neighborhood immigrant concentration and

adolescent violence.

Keywords

immigrant, violence, social capital, victimization

Scholarly interest in the connection between immigration and crime goes back more than a century

but has reemerged as a popular topic among criminologists. A quick review of the literature

reveals two key questions of interest to scholars: First, at the individual level, are immigrants more

likely than the native born to commit crime? And second, at the macro level, does immigration

adversely affect the crime rate? Not surprisingly, these questions are a lso of interest to the public

and to policy makers, especially in light of recent waves of immigration to the United States.

1

Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

2

Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana University-South Bend, South Bend, IN, USA

Corresponding Author:

Charis E. Kubrin, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, Social Ecology II, Room 3379,

Irvine, CA 92697, USA.

Email: ckubrin@uci.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

2015, Vol. 13(4) 345-366

ªThe Author(s) 2014

Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204014547590

yvj.sagepub.com

Concerning the first question, over a century of research reveals that criminal involvement among

immigrants is lower than for the native born, despite the long-held stereotypical view that the

‘‘immigrant has a serious adjustment problem—that he therefore should be more criminal than the

native’’ (Taft, 1933, p. 71). In the 1930s, the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforce-

ment, commonly known as the Wickersham Commission, published a report on ‘‘Crime and the For-

eign Born,’’ analyzing the extent of their criminal involvement, their relations with the criminal

justice system, and public attitudes toward immigrants and crime. The Commission found that the

popular view of immigrant criminality is grossly exaggerated—if not altogether erroneous—and

concluded that, in proportion to their numbers, the foreign born commit considerably fewer crimes

than the native born (National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, 1931).

This finding remains as true today as it was then; contemporary studies continue to document that

crime, arrest, and incarceration levels are lower among immigrants than among the native born

(Butcher & Piehl, 1998a, p. 654; Hagan & Palloni, 1999, p. 629; MacDonald & Saunders, 2012;

Martinez & Lee, 2000; McCord, 1995; Olson, Laurikkala, Huff-Corzine, & Corzine, 2009; Tonry,

1997). A related observation from this research, however, is that the individual-level link between

immigrants and crime appears to wane across generations, as scholars repeatedly discover that the

children of immigrants (i.e., the second generation) have much higher crime rates than their parents

(Morenoff & Astor, 2006, p. 36; Rumbaut, Gonzales, Komaie, Morgan, & Tafoya-Estrada, 2006,

p. 72; Taft, 1933; Tonry, 1997, p. 20).

1

One explanation for this finding is downward or segmented

assimilation (Morenoff & Astor, 2006; Rumbaut et al., 2006, p. 73). Assimilation often entails incor-

poration into ‘‘minority’’ status in the United States, particularly among poor immigrants from non-

European countries. As a result, the children and grandchildren of many immigrants, as well as many

immigrants themselves, become subject to economic and social forces that increase the likelihood of

criminal behavior the longer they live in the United States (Rumbaut & Ewing, 2007, p. 11). Rum-

baut, Gonzales, Komaie, Morgan, and Tafoya-Estrada (2006, p. 65) suggest that ‘‘Born or raised in

the United States, they inherit their immigrant parents’ customs and circumstances but come of age

with a distinctively American outlook and frame of reference and face the often-daunting task of

fitting into the American mainstream while meeting their parents’ expectations, learning the new

language, doing well in school, and finding decent jobs’’ (see also Zhou & Bankston, 2006). Thus,

a firmly established finding in the literature is that although immigrants are less crime prone than

their native-born counterparts, first-generation immigrants are typically more law abiding than their

children and grandchildren.

What is less well established, however, is an answer to the second question on how immigration

impacts crime rates across different spatial units, including neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan

areas. As argued elsewhere, immigration is a macro-level phenomenon and is therefore likely to

affect ‘‘demographic, economic, and social structures in ways that will impact overall crime rates,

net of any differences in the individual-level offending of immigrants and natives’’ (Ousey &

Kubrin, 2009, p. 448; see also Mears, 2002; Reid, Weiss, Adelman, & Jaret, 2005; Taft, 1933).

Despite this reality, the vast majority of research on the immigration–crime nexus has been con-

ducted at the individual level, leading some scholars to argue that ‘‘Research on the relationship

between immigration and crime must take into account the ecological impacts of immigrants that

may influence rates of criminal offending. Thus, while individual-level studies of immigrant crim-

inality tend to show that immigrants typically engage in less crime than their native-born counter-

parts, the effect of macro-level aspects of immigration on rates of criminal offending is unclear’’

(Reid et al., 2005, p. 758; see also Mears, 2002; Ousey & Kubrin, 2009).

Recently, however, this gap in the literature has been closing. In just a few short years, the num-

ber of studies that examine the immigration–crime relationship across various levels of aggregation

has grown immensely. Although these studies include investigations of metropolitan areas and cit-

ies, most common are neighborhood-level studies that examine whether, and to what extent,

346 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 13(4)