Immigration and crime
Refers to perceived or actual relationships between crime and immigration / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Immigration and crime explores whether there is a relationship between criminal activity and the phenomenon of immigration.
Most studies show that immigration has either no or minimal impact on crime in most countries.[1][2] There is little evidence that migration 'unconditionally' leads to more terrorist activity, especially in western countries, and the effectiveness of stopping migration on preventing terrorism is rather limited.[3] Research on the relationship between refugee migration and crime is ambiguous, and does not increase crime in resettlement programs like the U.S. which screen-out high-risk individuals.[4] Some scholars argue that this data even inflates the relative number of immigrants committing crimes because some data includes imprisonment for migration offenses while racial and ethnic discrimination by police and the judicial system can result in higher conviction rates for immigrants relative to the actual number of crimes committed.[5][6]
A 2023 study of 30 OECD countries found no statistical link between immigration and crime.[7] Research in the United States tends to suggest either that immigration has no impact on the crime rate or even that immigrants are less prone to crime.[8][9][10][11] A meta-analysis of 51 studies from 1994–2014 on the relationship between immigration and crime in the United States found that, overall, the immigration-crime association is slightly negative with significant variation across studies.[12] This aligns with a 2009 review of high-quality studies conducted in the United States that also found a negative relationship.[13] In Europe, there is also little connection between immigration and crime despite claims by some right-wing parties.[14]