why are immigrants' incarceration rates so low? evidence on selective immigration, deterrence,...
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Why are Immigrants' Incarceration Rates So Low? Evidence on Selective Immigration, Deterrence, and Deportation
Kristin F. ButcherFederal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Anne Morrison PiehlRutgers University and NBER
How do Immigrants Fare in the United States? Immigrants have tended to have low wages in
the U.S. (recent change at high end) Men aged 25-64, immigrant-native wage
differential:1970: 0.009 1980: -0.097 1990: -0.166 most recent earn 38% lower in 1990 (Borjas 1995) male immigrants earn 19% less in 2000 (Borjas 2004
and Borjas & Friedberg 2004) Poor labor market outcomes have led to concerns
about immigrants adding to the “underclass” and thus the population with poor social outcomes.
Reasons to Think Immigrants Contribute to the Crime Problem
Immigrants share characteristics in common with the native born population that is disproportionately incarcerated.
Cities with greater shares of immigrants have higher crime rates.
Those with poor labor market outcomes are disproportionately likely to engage in criminal activities.
Cross-sectional ExperienceOverall metropolitan area (MA) crime rates by fraction immigrant,
1990
01,0002,0003,0004,0005,0006,0007,0008,0009,000
10,00011,00012,00013,00014,000
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50 0.55
Fraction immigrant, 1989
Ove
rall
crim
e ra
te, m
ovin
g av
rg '8
9-91
Figure 4. Predicted Institutionalization for Immigrants
0
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
0.06
0.07
0.08
1980 1990 2000
Year
Pre
dic
ted
Fra
ctio
n In
stit
uti
on
aliz
ed
Prediction based on age
Prediction based on age, race/ethnicity, and education
Changes in 1990s 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act –Among other things, greatly expanded list of crimes for which non-citizens could be deported, made it retroactive, imposed mandatory detention following conclusion of prison term.
1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act –Among other things curtailed non-citizens access to welfare programs (originally for all non-citizens, later amended to grandfather in those already here at time of law’s passage).
Large numbers of immigrants. Crime rates down 30% over the decade. Incarceration rates up 63% over decade.
Today’s Paper
Examine how immigrants’ institutionalization rates compare to those of the native born.
Examine how these change across cohorts and over time.
Discuss the potential reasons for these changes: deportation, deterrence, self-selection.
Results Preview We will see that immigrants have lower
institutionalization rates than the native-born – about 1/5 the size.
This gap is much bigger in 2000, suggesting improvement along this dimension.
Direct effect of deportation appears to be small; positive selection of migrants appears to have increased over time.
Model of Immigrant Self-Selection
Roy (1951) reformulated in Borjas (1987) I=(
are mean log wages in host and source countries
are deviations of earnings in the two countries is cost of migration divided by the wage in the
source country (“time cost” of migration) individual migrates, I<0 individual stays Borjas used this model to explain changes in
cohort quality of immigrants to U.S. over last few decades. US attracts high skilled from compressed
earnings distributions, low skilled from unequal
Model of Immigrant Self-Selection continued
In Borjas, migration cost is constant across individuals, but suppose it varies with quality of social networks (Chiquiar and Hanson 2005, Hanson forthcoming). -> those with productive networks have lower wage
threshold for migration. Further suppose, =f(is expected
policy environment. -> shift in policy may shift migrant selection
If migration decision depends on multiple factors, can get very different implications across different dimensions of “skill.”
Data: U.S. Censuses, ’80, ’90, ‘00
We examine institutionalization among 18-40 year old men. (In 1980, 70% of this group are in correctional facilities).
Demographics in Table 1. Highlights:
Fraction immigrant tripled (6% - 17%) Education differs; improvements for natives. Changing racial and ethnic distributions. Citizenship correlated with time in the country
and has declined over time.
Figure 3.Fraction Immigrant in Institutions
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
0.12
0.14
0.16
0.18
1980 1990 2000
Year
Fra
ctio
n I
mm
igra
nt
Fraction Immigrant Non-Institution
Fraction Immigrant Institution
Figure 5. Institutionalization by Age
0
0.005
0.01
0.015
0.02
0.025
0.03
0.035
0.04
0.045
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Age
Fra
cti
on
Ins
titu
tio
na
lize
d
Native-born 2000
Native-born 1990
Native-born 1980
Recent Immig 2000
Recent Immigs 1990
Recent Immigs 1980
Table 2. Institutionalization across Cohorts
1980 1990 2000
Natives 0.0135 0.0217 0.0345
Immigrants 0.0042 0.0107 0.0068
1996-2000 0.0037
1991-1995 0.0050
1985-1990 0.0068 0.0072
1980-1984 0.0117 0.0106
1975-1979 0.0029 0.0117 0.0096
1970-1974 0.0036 0.0128 0.0141
Table 3. Stacked Logit(0) (1) (2) (3) (4)
Immigrant -0.0251
1996-00 -0.0208 -0.0137 -0.0116 -0.0117
1991-95 -0.0192 -0.0130 -0.0111 -0.0113
1985-90 -0.0162 -0.0118 -0.0105 -0.0108
1980-84 -0.0094 -0.0083 -0.0083 -0.0089
1975-79 -0.0082 -0.0073 -0.0075 -0.0082
1970-74 -0.0012 -0.0031 -0.0052 -0.0062
Three Hypotheses Deportation
In 1994 and 1996, expanded list of crimes for which could be deported.
Increased resources for deportation. Concerned with mechanical effect on
institutionalization rates. Deterrence
Due to above or general increase in punishment. Selection
Changes in welfare, criminal justice, or economy could have made US less attractive to certain potential migrants.
Use Cohort / Time Variation
To test hypotheses, need estimates of institutionalization of cohorts that vary by period.
Run separate logits by year and compare cohort effects across periods.
90 90 903 85 90 9 50 59...i ii i i
I a b c b c X
00 00 00 00 001 96 00 2 91 95 3 85 90 8 60 64...i ii i i i i
I a b c b c b c b c X
Table 4. Synthetic Cohort
(1) (2) (3) (4)
1985-90 -0.0074 -0.0043 -0.0039 -0.0043
1980-84 -0.0086 -0.0042 -0.0036 -0.0041
1975-79 -0.0098 -0.0042 -0.0036 -0.0040
1970-74 -0.0075 -0.0025 -0.0025 -0.0031
Deportation Laws and Probability of Institutionalization of Noncitizens “[M]andatory detention now applies to
almost all noncitizens . . . Deportable on crime-related grounds” (Legomsky 1999).
INS has removed fewer than 20% of criminal aliens under criminal justice supervision (Shuck & Williams 1999).
Noncitizens served longer prison terms than natives or other foreign born (Butcher & Piehl 2000).
Sanctuary laws also restrict enforcement of deportation orders (LeDuff 2005).
Citizenship
Those who just arrived have rates of “take up” of less than 10%; after 20 years it is 70%.
2000 recent arrivals have the lowest rates of all.
Rates did not increase over years. No appearance of negative selection
into citizenship.
Table 4b. Citizens Only
(1) (2) (3)
1985-90 -0.0137 -0.0065 -0.0054
1980-84 -0.0140 -0.0072 -0.0060
1975-79 -0.0137 -0.0072 -0.0060
1970-74 -0.0144 -0.0072 -0.0061
Deterrence If migration selects people especially
responsive to incentives, might be more deterred by policy changes.
General deterrence should affect citizens and noncitizens, as we saw in Table 4.
Compare native-born movers to immigrants to see if migration selects for responsiveness.
Table 4c. Movers Only
(1) (2) (3) (4)
1985-90 -0.0030 -0.0013 -0.0015 -0.0019
1980-84 -0.0044 -0.0011 -0.0011 -0.0014
1975-79 -0.0051 -0.0010 -0.0010 -0.0012
1970-74 -0.0034 -0.0000 -0.0003 -0.0007
Changes in Immigrant Selection
Perhaps migration itself selects for positive outcomes on criminal justice, and changes in the 1990s increased the extent to which this is true.
Would expect those arriving after 1996 to have the largest change if the legislation from mid-1990s is driving the change in selection.
Table 5. Constant Exposure Time
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Fewer than 5 years
-0.0110 -0.0054 -0.0047 -0.0051
5 - 10 years
-0.0142 -0.0067 -0.0054 -0.0058
Conclusions Immigrants are much less likely to be institutionalized
than natives; 1/3 to 1/5 as likely by 2000. A version of the Roy model shows that policy changes
may lead to increasingly positive selection. Deportation is not driving these findings; naturalized
citizens show the same patterns as immigrants overall. Native movers act somewhat like immigrants. Those already in the country and newly arrived
immigrants reduced their relative incarceration probability over the decades.
The process of migration appears to select for responsiveness to incentives.
Results suggest that immigration decision should be modeled over multiple dimensions.
Extra Slides: Data Validity
Enumeration and Group Quarters
Enumeration generally done by administrators for those in institutions.
Thought to be quite good by Census staff.
If anything, undercount of institutionalized immigrants will be lower in 2000 than 1990 due to new incentives to report to INS.
Undercount of Noninstitutionalized If undercount in immigrant communities was
less severe in 2000 than in 1990, then denominator artificially increased and improvements we see are overstated.
Robinson et al. (2002) used demographic analysis to estimate undercount at 1.65% in 1990 and 0.12% in 2000.
Because this analysis cannot be done for immigrants, we show how our estimates change for different assumptions of undercount for immigrants relative to natives.
Appendix 1. Effect of Assumptions on Relative Undercount (of noninstitutionalized)
Undercount RatioImmigrants : Native-born
Fraction Institutionalized
1990 2000
1:1 0.0105 0.00679
2:1 0.0104 0.00678
3:1 0.0102 0.00678
37:1 0.0067 0.0065
Figure 6. Changes in Metropolitan Area Crime Rate by Changes in Fraction Immigrant (1990 to 2000)
-4,000
-3,000
-2,000
-1,000
0
1,000
-0.02 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10
Change in fraction immigrant
Ch
an
ge
in o
vera
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rim
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regression line weighted by MA populationt=-1.82
Other Migration Concerns Lubotsky (2000) notes re-entrants may be
classified as recent arrivals. In wage studies, this leads to
overstatement of secular decline in wages. For our setting, if low earners more likely to
be incarcerated then “recent immigrants” biased up. But it is not clear we can infer this from wage studies.
If crime-prone immigrants migrate home before committing crimes, our results accurately reflect crimes but not criminality.
Figure 1: Institutionalization and Real Hourly Wages, 2000, by Country
0
0.005
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0.015
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0.025
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0.035
0.04
10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
Real Hourly Wage
Fra
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U.S.
Mexico
Japan
India
Guatemala
Canada
Dom Rep Jamaica
Cuba
Colombia Germany
Haiti
Vietnam
Phil.
Italy
England
Korea
China Iran
Taiwan
El Salvador
weighted regression line w/o U.S.