Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?
California Counts: population trends and profiles, Volume 9 Number 3 • February 2008
PDF - http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_208KBCC.pdf
Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl with research support from Jay Liao
"Few issues are as contentious as immigration and crime. Concern over the effects of immigration on crime is longstanding, and bans against criminal aliens constituted some of the earliest restrictions on immigration to the United States (Kanstroom, 2007). More recently, policies adopted in the mid-1990s greatly expanded the scope of acts for which noncitizens may be expelled from the United States. Even so, many calls to curtail immigration, particularly illegal immigration, appeal to public fears about immigrants’ involvement in criminal activities. Are such fears justified?"