Illegal immigrants sent to jail at a rate 4 times higher than U.S. citizens: study

[redleghunter]

Washington Times: By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Nearly 3 percent of illegal immigrants in Arizona end up in state prison or jail during the course of a year — four times the rate of U.S. citizens and legal residents, according to a study that uses federal reimbursements for prisons and jails to try to calculate one of the most important yet elusive statistics in the immigration debate.

In New Jersey, illegal immigrants are incarcerated five times more often, and rates on the West Coast are triple that of legal residents and citizens, according to the study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

FAIR based its calculations on federal government reimbursements to states and localities under the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which pays some of the costs for holding illegal immigrants in prisons and jails. To make the payments, the federal government must determine whether an inmate is definitely or possibly in the country illegally. FAIR used the number to then calculate overall incarceration rates.


The method is not without controversy. One analyst dismissed the calculations, saying SCAAP data counts are not comparable to other incarceration counts.

But FAIR says the SCAAP numbers are the best calculation because they focus on those known to be arrested on criminal charges and whom federal officials have concluded are in the country illegally.

In the 10 states FAIR selected, they determined that illegal immigrants ended up behind bars at higher rates, per capita.

More at the link: Study finds high rates of prison, jail for illegals

 

[tulc]

(snip)But FAIR says the SCAAP numbers are the best calculation...

...it couldn't be because it supports the position they want to believe way better then all the rest, could it?
tulc(is just curious)

 

[redleghunter]

...it couldn't be because it supports the position they want to believe way better then all the rest, could it?
tulc(is just curious)

What is interesting is no one else was collecting the data. Wonder why.

 

[tulc]

What is interesting is no one else was collecting the data. Wonder why.

Perhaps they are, it's just none of them get mentioned by FAIR because the rest of them don't support an "all immigrants (illegal or otherwise) are bad" agenda?
tulc(just a thought)

 

[redleghunter]

Perhaps they are, it's just none of them get mentioned by FAIR because the rest of them don't support an "all immigrants (illegal or otherwise) are bad" agenda?
tulc(just a thought)

It’s data it’s a study. Argue against the numbers that’s fair game. But arguing against numbers with rhetoric is not a valid metric.

Just like fact checking “hugely” with an answer of not really hugely.

 

[Yarddog]

Washington Times: By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Nearly 3 percent of illegal immigrants in Arizona end up in state prison or jail during the course of a year — four times the rate of U.S. citizens and legal residents, according to a study that uses federal reimbursements for prisons and jails to try to calculate one of the most important yet elusive statistics in the immigration debate.

In New Jersey, illegal immigrants are incarcerated five times more often, and rates on the West Coast are triple that of legal residents and citizens, according to the study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

FAIR based its calculations on federal government reimbursements to states and localities under the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which pays some of the costs for holding illegal immigrants in prisons and jails. To make the payments, the federal government must determine whether an inmate is definitely or possibly in the country illegally. FAIR used the number to then calculate overall incarceration rates.


The method is not without controversy. One analyst dismissed the calculations, saying SCAAP data counts are not comparable to other incarceration counts.

But FAIR says the SCAAP numbers are the best calculation because they focus on those known to be arrested on criminal charges and whom federal officials have concluded are in the country illegally.

In the 10 states FAIR selected, they determined that illegal immigrants ended up behind bars at higher rates, per capita.

More at the link: Study finds high rates of prison, jail for illegals

Which Washington newspaper has the correct data?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...lly-commit-more-crime/?utm_term=.b0febb035bfd

Two charts demolish the notion that immigrants here illegally commit more crime.

 

[The Barbarian]

But FAIR says the SCAAP numbers are the best calculation because they focus on those known to be arrested on criminal charges and whom federal officials have concluded are in the country illegally.

So their finding is that far more illegal aliens are incarcerated for being in the country than people who aren't illegal aliens?

On the other hand, as you know, illegal aliens are much less likely to commit violent crimes than are native born Americans.

Texas is one of the few states to track this data carefully:
Natives were convicted of 409,708 crimes, illegal immigrants were convicted of 15,803 crimes, and legal immigrants were convicted of 17,785 crimes in Texas in 2015. Thus, there were 1,797 criminal convictions of natives for every 100,000 natives, 899 criminal convictions of illegal immigrants for every 100,000 illegal immigrants, and 611 criminal convictions of legal immigrants for every 100,000 legal immigrants (Figure 1). As a percentage of their respective populations, there were 50 percent fewer criminal convictions of illegal immigrants than of native-born Americans in Texas in 2015. The criminal conviction rate for legal immigrants was about 66 percent below the native-born rate.
Criminal Immigrants in Texas: Illegal Immigrant Conviction and Arrest Rates for Homicide, Sex Crimes, Larceny, and Other Crimes

This is one of the reasons FAIR isn't taken very seriously by law enforcement people.

 

[The Barbarian]

Which Washington newspaper has the correct data?

Here's the trick:
because they focus on those known to be arrested on criminal charges and whom federal officials have concluded are in the country illegally.

Since, in many cases, it's a crime for an illegal alien to be in the country illegally, about 60 percent of would fit that description. However, as other studies show, such people are actually less dangerous to us then native-born Americans, it's merely a dishonest attempt to redefine "dangerous criminal" to include a woman who walks in across the border illegally, and does no harm to anyone.

As I said, this is why FAIR isn't taken very seriously by law enforcement people.

 

[redleghunter]

Which Washington newspaper has the correct data?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...lly-commit-more-crime/?utm_term=.b0febb035bfd

Two charts demolish the notion that immigrants here illegally commit more crime.

The Washington Times quotes the only agency actually tracking the data.

 

[redleghunter]

So their finding is that far more illegal aliens are incarcerated for being in the country than people who aren't illegal aliens?

On the other hand, as you know, illegal aliens are much less likely to commit violent crimes than are native born Americans.

Read the article.

 

[redleghunter]

Since, in many cases, it's a crime for an illegal alien to be in the country illegally, about 60 percent of would fit that description.

Not the case with this study as the article quotes:

FAIR, though, says the conditions of SCAAP money — someone must have a felony or two misdemeanor convictions — plus the average length of stay means the rate of double-counting is likely small.

 

[The Barbarian]

FAIR, though, says the conditions of SCAAP money — someone must have a felony or two misdemeanor convictions — plus the average length of stay means the rate of double-counting is likely small.

Wouldn't seem so, since the data from Texas (which actually keeps data on this) shows that illegal aliens are much less likely to commit crimes than are native-born Americans. And that's a lot more reliable than the double counting in FAIR's study.

 

[redleghunter]

Wouldn't seem so, since the data from Texas (which actually keeps data on this) shows that illegal aliens are much less likely to commit crimes than are native-born Americans. And that's a lot more reliable than the double counting in FAIR's study.

How is a study of one state more reliable than a study from 10 states.

What I quoted was from the article and the study. So it means your comment they were counting arrests for merely being illegal immigrants is not accurate. It had to be two misdemeanors or a felony conviction.

 

[The Barbarian]

How is a study of one state more reliable than a study from 10 states.

Because it only counts crimes committed by illegal aliens other than illegal entry. So it tells us how dangerous they are compared to native-born Americans. And as you see, they are much less dangerous than native-born Americans.

And because Texas is a very conservative state, with no liberal agenda. FAIR, as you know, has an agenda to make illegal aliens look dangerous.

And because other states don't keep such records, as Texas does.

So it means your comment they were counting arrests for merely being illegal immigrants is not accurate. It had to be two misdemeanors or a felony conviction.

Why not just stop double-counting entirely and compare the rate of convictions for illegal aliens as opposed to native-born Americans? We all understand why FAIR's data doesn't match up with all the other studies.

 

[redleghunter]

Because it only counts crimes committed by illegal aliens other than illegal entry. So it tells us how dangerous they are compared to native-born Americans. And as you see, they are much less dangerous than native-born Americans.

The article confirms the study measures convictions and incarceration. Either felony convictions or more than one misdemeanor.

 

[The Barbarian]

We get the double-counting issue. That seems to be why FAIR gets a radically different result than the State of Texas, or the Cato Institute.

And it makes sense; FAIR has an agenda which requires that they somehow show that illegal aliens are more dangerous than the rest of us, even though the numbers show that they are less prone to be dangerous criminals.

Illegal Immigrant Conviction Rates Are Low, Even When Factoring in Recidivism
Over the last two years, Cato has published three Immigration Research and Policy Briefs on illegal immigrant criminality. In each one, we found that illegal immigrants have lower criminal conviction rates in the state of Texas and lower nationwide incarceration rates relative to native-born Americans. Although nobody has criticized our methods or the data, we answer other criticisms that arise.

The best recent criticism is that illegal immigrant conviction rates are low because they are deported after they serve their sentences, which reduces their recidivism rates relative to native-born Americans who cannot be deported after being released from prison. Thus, the illegal immigrant incarceration or conviction rates are lower than those of native-born Americans because it is more difficult for them to recidivate as they would have to enter the country illegally again to do so. This has been a difficult criticism to address as data limitations are severe, but we attempted to do so after making some assumptions. We focused on comparing first-time criminal conviction rates.

We estimate that native-born Texans had a first-time criminal conviction rate of 683 per 100,000 natives in 2016. In the same year, we estimate that illegal immigrants had a first-time criminal conviction rate of 462 per 100,000 illegal immigrants – 32 percent below that of native-born Americans. Thus, about 36 percent of the gap that we observed in criminal conviction rates between illegal immigrants and native-born Americans can be explained by lower illegal immigrant recidivism that is likely due to their deportation.

This question could have been easily resolved by comparing the immigration statuses of first-time offenders. Of course, such data do not exist. Regardless, this is still an important question even if our estimate results from a back of the envelope estimate. You can judge for yourself how we came to this estimate. This is how we did it.

First, we used the Arizona state prison data from 2016 for those admitted to state prison that year. Of U.S. citizens sent to prison that year, 58 percent had previously been to prison at some point since 1984. The subpopulation of deportable non-citizens, which includes illegal immigrants but is not limited to them, had a recidivism rate of 47 percent – below those of U.S. citizens, but not that much below.

Second, we assumed that U.S. citizens are analogous to native-born Americans. This isn’t accurate, of course, but native-born Americans are 94 percent of Arizona’s citizen population so it is a reasonable back-of-the-envelope assumption.

Third, we assumed that the Arizona recidivism rates for prison by roughly approximated immigration statuses translate well to the Texas criminal conviction rates. This is our weakest assumption as not every criminal conviction results in incarceration and the Texas data on illegal immigrant and native-born convictions is more granular than the Arizona incarceration data.

Fourth, we subtracted the recidivism rates from 100 percent to estimate the first-time offender rate. Then we multiplied those numbers by the Texas criminal conviction rates by immigration status in 2016.

Our back-of-the-envelope estimate should not be the final word on this issue, but we cannot do better at this time due to the lack of specific data. Improved criminal justice and immigration data could easily answer these questions if such data are ever created or available. This estimate cannot be the final word on this topic. Regardless, our estimates do confirm the pattern of lower illegal immigrant criminality discovered elsewhere but the gap is narrowed.
Illegal Immigrant Conviction Rates Are Low, Even When Factoring in Recidivism

 

[redleghunter]

We get the double-counting issue. That seems to be why FAIR gets a radically different result than the State of Texas, or the Cato Institute.

And it makes sense; FAIR has an agenda which requires that they somehow show that illegal aliens are more dangerous than the rest of us, even though the numbers show that they are less prone to be dangerous criminals.

Illegal Immigrant Conviction Rates Are Low, Even When Factoring in Recidivism
Over the last two years, Cato has published three Immigration Research and Policy Briefs on illegal immigrant criminality. In each one, we found that illegal immigrants have lower criminal conviction rates in the state of Texas and lower nationwide incarceration rates relative to native-born Americans. Although nobody has criticized our methods or the data, we answer other criticisms that arise.

The best recent criticism is that illegal immigrant conviction rates are low because they are deported after they serve their sentences, which reduces their recidivism rates relative to native-born Americans who cannot be deported after being released from prison. Thus, the illegal immigrant incarceration or conviction rates are lower than those of native-born Americans because it is more difficult for them to recidivate as they would have to enter the country illegally again to do so. This has been a difficult criticism to address as data limitations are severe, but we attempted to do so after making some assumptions. We focused on comparing first-time criminal conviction rates.

We estimate that native-born Texans had a first-time criminal conviction rate of 683 per 100,000 natives in 2016. In the same year, we estimate that illegal immigrants had a first-time criminal conviction rate of 462 per 100,000 illegal immigrants – 32 percent below that of native-born Americans. Thus, about 36 percent of the gap that we observed in criminal conviction rates between illegal immigrants and native-born Americans can be explained by lower illegal immigrant recidivism that is likely due to their deportation.

This question could have been easily resolved by comparing the immigration statuses of first-time offenders. Of course, such data do not exist. Regardless, this is still an important question even if our estimate results from a back of the envelope estimate. You can judge for yourself how we came to this estimate. This is how we did it.

First, we used the Arizona state prison data from 2016 for those admitted to state prison that year. Of U.S. citizens sent to prison that year, 58 percent had previously been to prison at some point since 1984. The subpopulation of deportable non-citizens, which includes illegal immigrants but is not limited to them, had a recidivism rate of 47 percent – below those of U.S. citizens, but not that much below.

Second, we assumed that U.S. citizens are analogous to native-born Americans. This isn’t accurate, of course, but native-born Americans are 94 percent of Arizona’s citizen population so it is a reasonable back-of-the-envelope assumption.

Third, we assumed that the Arizona recidivism rates for prison by roughly approximated immigration statuses translate well to the Texas criminal conviction rates. This is our weakest assumption as not every criminal conviction results in incarceration and the Texas data on illegal immigrant and native-born convictions is more granular than the Arizona incarceration data.

Fourth, we subtracted the recidivism rates from 100 percent to estimate the first-time offender rate. Then we multiplied those numbers by the Texas criminal conviction rates by immigration status in 2016.

Our back-of-the-envelope estimate should not be the final word on this issue, but we cannot do better at this time due to the lack of specific data. Improved criminal justice and immigration data could easily answer these questions if such data are ever created or available. This estimate cannot be the final word on this topic. Regardless, our estimates do confirm the pattern of lower illegal immigrant criminality discovered elsewhere but the gap is narrowed.
Illegal Immigrant Conviction Rates Are Low, Even When Factoring in Recidivism

There were quite a few assumptions in their methodology.

 

[The Barbarian]

There were quite a few assumptions in their methodology.

But they didn't fudge the data as FAIR did. This is why FAIR's results are entirely different than all the other studies.

It's not just that illegal aliens tend to be less violent. It actually affects public safety:

But he's railing against a threat that exists largely in his mind. Trump failed to notice that the big wave of unauthorized immigration that came in the 1990s coincided with a plunge in crime and violence.


In 1990, there were about 3.5 million undocumented foreigners in this country, and the national murder rate was 9.4 per 100,000 people. When the undocumented population peaked at 12.2 million in 2007, the murder rate was 5.6 per 100,000—a decline of 40 percent—and it has fallen more since then.


Far from generating crime, this group appears to suppress it. A groundbreaking new state-by-state study covering 1990 to 2014 by sociologists Michael Light of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ty Miller of Purdue in the journal Criminology concludes that "undocumented immigration over this period is generally associated with decreasing violence."


In another study, Light, Miller, and Brian Kelly (also of Purdue) found that "increased undocumented immigration was significantly associated with reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests."


The question Light and his colleagues examined, he told me, is: "Does undocumented immigration make us less safe?" The answer: "No." If anything, he says, the evidence "suggests the opposite."


Policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato Institute examined the evidence on crime from Texas. He found that unauthorized foreigners were about half as likely as native-born Americans to be convicted of a crime and one-quarter less likely to be convicted of murder. Their overall arrest rate was 40 percent below that of people born in this country.
Undocumented Immigrants Make America Safer

The results of this research offer little evidence that Mexican immigration increases crime in the United States. If anything, there is some evidence that crime declines after immigrants arrive. These findings are supported by research from the Public Policy Institute of California on the composition of inmates in California prisons, which reveals that Mexican immigrants are dramatically underrepresented in the state prison system.

For those who are skeptical that these findings are true, consider the case of El Paso, Texas a working class city of approximately 700,000 people that sits opposite the Rio Grande river from Ciudad Juarez, one of the most violent and lawless cities in Mexico. More than 80% of El Paso's residents are Hispanic and the vast majority of these individuals are of Mexican origin. A large population of El Paso's Hispanic population are immigrants. In fact, El Paso has one of the highest proportions of immigrants among U.S. cities. Many of these migrants are undocumented. If those who fear Mexican immigration are right, then El Paso should be a hotbed of violence. As it turns out, El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States with a homicide rate of 2.4 per 100,000 residents. Just a tiny handful of American cities have a lower homicide rate and most of those that do (San Diego, Chula Vista, and Mesa, AZ, for example) also have outsize Mexican populations. Incredibly El Paso's homicide rate is so low that it compares favorably to European capitals like London, Paris and Amsterdam, cities which have rates of lethal violence that are generally an order of magnitude lower than cities in the United States.
Do Mexican Immigrants "Cause" Crime? | Department of Criminology

If facts matter, then you have to conclude that illegal aliens are less dangerous to us then native-born Americans.

 

[EpiscipalMe]

"Overall, we rate FAIR Questionable based on Extreme Right Wing Bias as it relates to immigration, promotion of propaganda and conspiracies, as well as having connections to documented Hate Groups."
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) - Media Bias/Fact Check

 

[redleghunter]

"Overall, we rate FAIR Questionable based on Extreme Right Wing Bias as it relates to immigration, promotion of propaganda and conspiracies, as well as having connections to documented Hate Groups."
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) - Media Bias/Fact Check

Of course they do.