New Directions in Research on Immigration and Crime, United States, 2000-2020 (ICPSR 39266)

Version Date: Apr 10, 2025

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Principal Investigator(s):
Charis Elizabeth Kubrin, University of California-Irvine

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39266.v1

Version V1

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Summary

The main objective of the project was to improve understanding of the immigration-crime relationship. This study aimed to examine the robustness of the immigration-crime relationship across a substantially large and diverse range of neighborhoods across the U.S., reflecting different immigration contexts and histories. This included examining differences across groups, whether by immigrant status, demographic attributes, and/or socio-economic background. Additionally, this study examined how the immigration-crime relationship may be context dependent, and how immigration-related policies and practices may condition the immigration-crime relationship.

Citation

Kubrin, Charis Elizabeth. New Directions in Research on Immigration and Crime, United States, 2000-2020. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-04-10. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39266.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (2019-R2-CX-0056)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

City

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2000 -- 2020

Date of Collection

2000-01-01 -- 2019-12-31
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Study Purpose

The purpose of this study was to improve understanding of the immigration-crime relationship.

Study Design

This study design included four datasets created by the research team for analysis:

  1. The National Incident Crime Study (NICS) was a large-scale project conducted by members of the Irvine Laboratory for the Study of Space and Crime (ILSSC). The crime data for a small number of cities were collected directly from agencies, while much of the data was obtained from public use agency websites. Crime data were collected for cities from general websites, such as open data websites, and the website provided by ESRI. For another set of cities, the data were collected from the now-defunct MOTO website. These data were a mix of crime incident and calls for service data. Additionally, crime data for another set of cities were collected from an earlier ILSSC study, the Southern California Crime Study (SCCS). These data were from police agencies in the five county Southern California region covering a high percentage of neighborhoods in the regions of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego. Overall, the data project provided crime incident data at various time points for 630 cities, considerably ranging in size and geographic location. The data were cleaned and geocoded, and only includes crime data that reasonably matches the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data that is reported by each city to the FBI. The NICS data also included the spatial location of crime incidents. The spatial information of the data allowed researchers to explore questions of ecological interest. These data enabled researchers to examine beyond single city analysis and whether and/or how the broader context impacts the spatial location of crime.
    2. Please note that this dataset is the only dataset included in the current release.

  2. The research team created datasets in the Census Research Data Center (CRDC). These data used household-level data for the Census in 2000 and the American Community Surveys beginning in 2005 to create neighborhood-measures for the research team's ecological models. This required the research team to create proper measures based on the characteristics of persons living within a particular census tract or egohood, and also to create proper measures based on the households living within those geographic units. The research team then aggregated the data to tracts or egohoods for the final analyses. These data allowed the research team to create unique measures not available in the public-use Census data. Please note that this dataset is not included in the current release.

  3. The research team created city-level datasets to capture the broader context in which immigrant neighborhoods are situated. Demographic (e.g., immigrant population, racial/ethnic composition) and socio-economic (e.g., level of economic disadvantage and inequality) measures along with measures reflecting immigration policy and practice (e.g., Sanctuary status) reflected key aspects of the broader context. Please note that this dataset is not included in the current release.

  4. The research team produced nationality-specific data from TRACFed data on immigration removal cases filed and adjudicated from 2010 to 2018, aggregated to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office level, linked to individual counties. Please note that this dataset is not included in the current release.

Sample

The inclusion criteria for cities were the following:

  • First, the research team determined whether a city had crime near one of the three decadal timepoints. To determine this, the research team computed the average number of crimes for each crime type in the three years around 2000 (1999-2001), the three years around 2010 (2009-2011) and the three years around 2018 (2017-2019). As long as a city had crime in at least one of the three years, the research team computed the average at this decadal timepoint. The research team did not include crime data from 2020 given the challenges of crime data during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Second, the research team only included cities that had at least 10,000 population at the decadal timepoint in which they provided crime data. The research team only included the crime data from agencies reporting crime incidents that occurred within a city with at least 10,000 population (this includes incorporated cities, as well as Census designated places). A key criterion was that the city reports crime data in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), as this is necessary for checking the reliability of the crime data. Thus, the research team did not include unincorporated areas policed by county sheriffs.

  • Third, for each city it was determined how many crime types were available at each decadal point (of the six part 1 crimes in the UCR: homicides, aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries, motor vehicle theft, and larcenies). Some crime types were unavailable from a city in a particular year, whereas others were assessed as unreliable in our cleaning procedures.

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    The research team included a city in the National Incident Crime Study (NICS) if it satisfied criteria 1 and 2, and if it had at least four crime types in at least one decadal timepoint.

    Time Method

    Longitudinal

    Universe

    Cities in the United States

    Unit(s) of Observation

    City

    Data Type(s)

    Mode of Data Collection

    Description of Variables

    This study includes geographic descriptive variables regarding the following information:

  • City name
  • Census tract information
  • State FIPS
  • Population
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    This study also includes criminalization descriptive variables per geographic location regarding the following information:

  • Aggravated Assaults
  • Robberies
  • Burglaries
  • Motor vehicle thefts
  • Larcenies
  • Property crimes
  • Homicides
  • Violent crimes

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    Original Release Date

    2025-04-10

    Version History

    2025-04-10 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

    • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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    Notes

    • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.