Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2758
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Item AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF IMMIGRANT REVITALIZATION: UNVEILING THE CRIME-REDUCING POWER OF IMMIGRANT SOCIAL CAPITAL(2024) Chen, Xuanying; Vélez, María; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The consensus in the immigration-crime literature is that immigration either has a null or an inverse relationship with neighborhood crime (Ousey & Kubrin, 2018). These findings align with the “immigrant revitalization thesis,” which argues that immigration reduces neighborhood crime by producing immigrant social capital and developing community social control. However, the proposed revitalization process has been rarely tested empirically. This dissertation contributes to the current literature by examining the immigration-crime relationship at the neighborhood level and the intervening mechanism of immigration social capital using a large sample of neighborhoods across the U.S. Specifically, it investigates the mediating influence of stable families, multigenerational families, local businesses, and self-employment in the immigration-crime nexus. Using the newly collected National Neighborhood Crime Study 3 Pilot Panel data, I employ a series of fixed-effects and structural equation models (SEM) for violent crime and burglary. The findings highlight the importance of stable families, namely that immigrant neighborhoods bring in stable family structures that translate into less violence in the neighborhood. However, analyses do not find significant mediating influences for other forms of immigrant social capital. The results provide partial support for the immigrant revitalization perspective and warrant further methodological development and theoretical revision when studying the immigration-neighborhood crime link.Item Immigration and Neighborhood Crime: The Moderating Influence of City Labor Instability(2020) Chen, Xuanying; Vélez, María B; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The bulk of extant work finds that immigrant prevalence helps to reduce neighborhood levels of serious crime. These findings align with the “immigrant revitalization thesis” in which states that immigration reduces crime by strengthening social ties and attendant social controls as well as stimulating the local economy. Also, a city’s conditions are shown to be a substantial moderator for the immigration-crime nexus. Thus, this study tests whether labor instability at the city level shapes the immigration-crime relationship, and whether this interaction differs by gateway status. Using the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS) which provides information on crime as well as demographics for 87 cities across 8,931 neighborhoods, I fit multilevel models for violent and property crime, and for gateway and non-gateway cities. This paper finds that in cities with a higher level of labor instability, immigrant prevalence is associated with reductions in neighborhood level of violent crime, but not property crime. This interaction effect is significant for violent crime regardless of cities’ gateway status but not for property crime.Item IMMIGRATION EFFECTS ON FAMILY STRUCTURE AND HOMICIDE VICTIMIZATION FOR GROUPS WITH DIFFERENT RACE AND ETHNICITY STATUS(2019) Luna, Mathew; Xie, Min; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Guided by the immigrant revitalization theory, this paper will argue that improvements in family structure play a role in the immigration-crime relationship. The data used in this study were obtained from the National Vital Statistics System, the American Community Survey, and the decennial census. This paper uses cross-sectional and longitudinal models to investigate whether family structure plays a role in the immigration-crime relationship. The longitudinal models will look at changes in homicide data from 2007 and 2017. Findings from the longitudinal models show no support to indicate that family structure plays a role in the immigration-crime relationship. However, findings from Black and White non-Hispanic cross-sectional models do show some support for the argument that family structure does play a role in the immigration-crime relationship.Item Immigrant Assimilation, Family Functioning and Delinquency: A Test of Mediating and Moderating Influences(2010) DiPietro, Stephanie; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since the earliest writings on immigrant adaptation scholars have speculated that assimilation may relate to delinquency through its effects on the family. Despite this longstanding line of inquiry, empirical research on family processes across immigrant generations has yielded equivocal findings, with some studies offering support for the mediating influence of the family on the assimilation-crime link, while others finding little variation across immigrant generations with respect to family functioning or its implication for behavior. Further, while research on immigrant adaptation has proliferated in recent years, consideration of how immigration relates to crime at the individual level has all but ignored the salient role of gender. The purpose of this research is to contribute to the growing literature on the individual level mechanisms linking immigrant status to offending behaviors in two important ways: First, using a diverse sample of youth from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, I test the mediating role of five interstitial family processes--monitoring, attachment, support, harsh discipline and conflict--to determine whether generational differences in maladaptive behaviors are indeed attributable to differences in family characteristics. Second, I address a glaring gap in the immigrant-crime literature by examining the moderating influence of gender on the linkages among generational status, family processes and delinquency. Results of OLS and negative binomial regression analyses offer, at best, limited support for the hypothesized mediating role of family processes in the assimilation-crime link. For only one family process--family conflict--is generational status a significant correlate, net of controls. Sobel tests indicate that family conflict--which is higher among more assimilated youth--partially mediates the relationship between generational status and violence, but not substance use. Notably, however, I find important gender differences in the influence of assimilatory status on both family functioning and problem behaviors. Collectively, girls appear to be better "protected" by their immigrant status than boys. I discuss the implications of these findings and my proposed directions for future research.Item Are Immigrants Crime Prone? A Multifaceted Investigation of the Relationship between Immigration and Crime in Two Eras(2010) Bersani, Bianca; Laub, John H.; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Are immigrants crime prone? In America, this question has been posed since the turn of the 20th century and more than 100 years of research has shown that immigration is not linked to increasing crime rates. Nevertheless, as was true more than a century ago, the myth of the criminal immigrant continues to permeate public debate. In part this continued focus on immigrants as crime prone is the result of significant methodological and theoretical gaps in the extant literature. Five key limitations are identified and addressed in this research including: (1) a general reliance on aggregate level analyses, (2) the treatment of immigrants as a homogeneous entity, (3) a general dependence on official data, (4) the utilization of cross-sectional analyses, and (5) nominal theoretical attention. Two broad questions motivate this research. First, how do the patterns of offending over the life course differ across immigrant and native-born groups? Second, what factors explain variation in offending over time for immigrants and does the influence of these predictors vary across immigrant and native-born individuals? These questions are examined using two separate datasets capturing information on immigration and crime during two distinct waves of immigration in the United States. Specifically, I use the Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency data and subsequent follow-ups to capture early 20th century immigration and crime, while contemporary data come from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997. Three particularly salient conclusions are drawn from this research. First, patterns of offending (i.e., prevalence, frequency, persistence and desistance) are remarkably similar for native-born and immigrant individuals. Second, although differences are observed when examining predictors of offending for native-born and immigrant individuals, they tend to be differences in degree rather than kind. That is, immigrants and native-born individuals are influenced similarly by family, peer, and school factors. Finally, these findings are robust and held when taking into account socio-historical context, immigrant generation, immigration nationality group, and crime type. In sum, based on the evidence from this research, the simple answer to the question of whether immigrants are crime prone is no.