Academic Paper from the year 2016 in the subject Sociology - Law and Delinquency, grade: 10.0, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - Newark (School of Criminal Justice), course: Racial, Ethnic and Religious Diversity and Public Policy in America, language: English, abstract: This research paper examines the relationship of undocumented Latinos to crime in the United States. Many empirical studies in the past years argued that undocumented immigrants have been a reason in the decrease in crime rates over the past forty years. Communities with a high number of undocumented immigrants tend to have very low crime rates compared to those of native-born Americans. Already deteriorated neighbourhoods, where undocumented newcomers establish their homes, show a significant decrease in crime. Both the spur of immigration and the decrease in crime rates have run parallel to each other since the 1980s. However, in the last decade, a mass incarceration of undocumented Latinos was found in the U.S. corrections system due to an overwhelming target of minority groups and tough legislations passed by the U.S. government.

This unique compilation of essays and entries provides critical insights into the Latino/a experience with the U.S. criminal justice system. Concerns about immigration's relationship to crime make accurate information and critical analysis of the utmost importance. Latinos and Criminal Justice: An Encyclopedia promotes understanding of Latinas and Latinos and the U.S. criminal justice system, at the same time dispelling popular misconceptions about this population and criminal activity in the United States. Unlike a traditional encyclopedia comprised solely of A–Z entries, this work consists of two parts. Part I offers detailed essays on particularly important topics. Part II provides brief, A–Z entries. Topics are crossreferenced to enable easy research. Among the wide range of topics covered are policing and police misconduct, incarceration, the war on drugs, gangs, border crime, and racial profiling. Historically important issues and events relative to the Latino experience of criminal justice in the United States are also included, as are key legal cases.

Examines the nexus between immigration and crime from all of the angles. This work addresses not just the evidence regarding the criminality of immigrants but also the research on the victimization of immigrants; human trafficking; domestic violence; the police handling of human trafficking; and, the exportation to crime problems via deportation.

In the United States, immigration is generally seen as a law and order issue. Amidst increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, unauthorized migrants have been cast as lawbreakers. Governing Immigration Through Crime offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the use of crime and punishment to manage undocumented immigrants. Presenting key readings and cutting-edge scholarship, this volume examines a range of contemporary criminalizing practices: restrictive immigration laws, enhanced border policing, workplace audits, detention and deportation, and increased policing of immigration at the state and local level. Of equal importance, the readings highlight how migrants have managed to actively resist these punitive practices. In bringing together critical theorists of immigration to understand how the current political landscape propagates the view of the "illegal alien" as a threat to social order, this text encourages students and general readers alike to think seriously about the place of undocumented immigrants in American society.

Outside Justice: Undocumented Immigrants and the Criminal Justice System fills a clear gap in the scholarly literature on the increasing conceptual overlap between popular perceptions of immigration and criminality, and its reflection in the increasing practical overlap between criminal justice and immigration control systems. Drawing on data from the United States and other nations, scholars from a range of academic disciplines examine the impact of these trends on the institutions, communities, and individuals that are experiencing them. Individual entries address criminal victimization and labor exploitation of undocumented immigrant communities, the effects of parental detention and deportation on children remaining in destination countries, relations between immigrant communities and law enforcement agencies, and the responses of law enforcement agencies to drastic changes in immigration policy, among other topics. Taken as a whole, these essays chart the ongoing progression of social forces that will determine the well-being of Western democracies throughout the 21st century. In doing so, they set forth a research agenda for reexamining and challenging the goals of converging criminal justice and immigration control policy, and raise a number of carefully considered, ethical alternatives to the contemporary policy status quo.​​Contemporary immigration is the focus of highly charged rhetoric and policy innovation, both attempting to define the movement of people across national borders as fundamentally an issue of criminal justice. This realignment has had profound effects on criminal justice policy and practice and immigration control alike, and raises far-reaching implications for social inclusion, labor economies, community cohesion, and a host of other areas of immediate interest to social science researchers and practitioners.

Latino Homicide is the first empirically based, but readable book for courses to counter the conventional wisdom that immigrant populations only contribute crime to their communities. For this second edition, Martinez further emphasizes his argument with updated data and the addition of a new city, San Antonio. With fascinating case studies from police reports and actual cases from six varied cities, Latino homicide rates are revealed to be markedly lower than one would expect, given the economic deprivation of these urban areas. Far from dangerous or criminal, these communities often have exceptionally strong social networks precisely because of their shared immigrant experiences. Martinez skillfully refutes negative stereotypes in a coherent and critically rigorous analysis of the issues.

Handcuffs and Chain Link enters the immigration debate by addressing one of its most controversial aspects: the criminalization both of extralegal immigration to the United States and of immigrants themselves in popular and political discourse. Looking at the factors that led up to criminalization, Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien points to the alternative approach of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and how its ultimate demise served to negatively reinforce the fictitious association of extralegal immigrants with criminality. Crucial to Gonzalez O’Brien’s account thus is the concept of the critical policy failure—a piece of legislation that attempts a radically different approach to a major issue but has shortcomings that ultimately further entrench the approach it was designed to supplant. The IRCA was just such a piece of legislation. It highlighted the contributions of the undocumented and offered amnesty to some while attempting to stem the flow of extralegal immigration by holding employers accountable for hiring the undocumented. The failure of this effort at decriminalization prompted a return to criminalization with a vengeance, leading to the stalemate on immigration policy that persists to this day.

The papers in this collection assess contemporary patterns of crime as related to immigration, race, and ethnicity. Overall, the contributors argue that fears of immigrant crime are largely unfounded, as immigrants are themselves often more likely to be the victims of discrimination, stigmatization, and crime.

This book presents the history of immigration to the United States, debates over criminalization under the Trump administration, and the effects on immigrants, U.S. residents, the U.S. economy, and its relationships with other nations. Robert Hartmann McNamara offers a comprehensive understanding of past and current immigration policy in the United States and exposes falsehoods in the rhetoric and narrative portraying Latino and Mexican immigrants in the U.S. Repeated statements by federal officials, including the U.S. president, that immigrants pose a threat to national security, contribute to crime, and take jobs away from native-born residents have predicated intensified immigration enforcement and deportation policies. However, the evidence has consistently concluded that these narratives are inaccurate. This book highlights white nationalism as a backdrop to understanding current immigration policy and tactics. It examines how political and economic factors, broadly defined as neoliberal policies, shape the immigration narrative and unpacks the criminal justice system's role in immigration, law enforcement efforts, problems with immigration courts and judges, and the detention of immigrants as part of a larger mass incarceration of people of color. Finally, the text illuminates the reasons for massive migration, with the U.S. contributing to the problem by supporting regimes that endorse or allow humanitarian crises.

Winner, 2017 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award A thorough and captivating exploration of how mass incarceration and law and order policies of the past forty years have transformed immigration and border enforcement Criminal prosecutions for immigration offenses have more than doubled over the last two decades, as national debates about immigration and criminal justice reforms became headline topics. What lies behind this unprecedented increase? From Deportation to Prison unpacks how the incarceration of over two million people in the United States gave impetus to a federal immigration initiative—The Criminal Alien Program (CAP)—designed to purge non-citizens from dangerously overcrowded jails and prisons. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic and archival research, the findings in this book reveal how the Criminal Alien Program quietly set off a punitive turn in immigration enforcement that has fundamentally altered detention, deportation, and criminal prosecutions for immigration offenses. Patrisia Macías-Rojas presents a “street-level” perspective on how this new regime has serious lived implications for the day-to-day actions of Border Patrol agents, local law enforcement, civil and human rights advocates, and for migrants and residents of predominantly Latina/o border communities.