Do Immigrants Cause Crime
The article Do Immigrants Cause Crime was written by Milo Bianchi, Paolo Bounanno and Paolo Pinotti in the year 2008. These authors examines whether empirical relationship that may exists between crime and immigration in Italian provinces for a period of 13 years between the year 1990 and 2003. This article has drawn data from administrative data in assessing and correlating the population size of immigrants and the property crime incidents with the crime rate in these provinces. Instrumental variables are used based on migration of individuals to European countries with an aim of identifying casual impact of immigrant populations exogenous change casual impact in Italy. After critical analysis of the information and data estimates obtained and a review of various theories of crime, the article comes to a conclusion that immigration only leads to an increase in incident of robberies only while all other types of crimes are unaffected. The authors suggests that because robberies account for a minor percentage of criminal offenses in these areas, the overall effect of immigration on crime is close to zero refuting the claim that immigration leads to an increase in crime.
Summary
The authors introduces the article by first acknowledging that the prevalence of immigration practices around the world has increased but laments that no extensive studies have been conducted on impact of immigration on crime rates. According to the article, much of the earlier studies concentrate on the impact of immigration on natives but not on crime. The article draws information from various sources including books and earlier studies in its introduction (Butcher Piehl, 1998). The authors cites to the international social security survey programs national identity survey of the years 1995 and 2003, which had found out that OECD countries believed that immigration was leading to increased crime rate. This forms the research objective and hypothesis of the article. The article suggests that most of the immigration policies that have been formulated are based on this perception. The article also cites the standard economic theories of crime that arguably states that there could be a correlation between crime and immigration (Borjas National Bureau of Economic Research, 1998, Ehrlich, 1973). This theory argues that given the hard and difficult living standards of the immigrants, they have higher propensities of committing crime as compared to the natives.
The article is based in Italian provinces and the authors use information obtained from the police administrative records to criminal offenses pattern. According to the information analysis, the pressure of immigration in Italy is found to have increased emanating from political instability in neighboring countries (Zimmermann Bauer, 2002). An econometric analysis using OLS estimation is used by the article whereby criminal activity determinants are controlled. According to the results of this analysis, 1 increase in immigration leads to 0.1 increase in criminal offenses with property crime thefts and robberies taking prevalence. The authors Milo, Paolo and Paolo also analyze information from judicial law to get accurate information on crime prevalence amongst immigrants. Findings of this article suggest that although immigration has increased tremendously over the period of the study, crime as a result of immigration is only 0.99 which is less than 1 of total crimes committed during this period (Card, 2001). However, under reporting as well as heterogeneous law enforcement is cited by authors as a major possible cause of crime data errors. The article also finds no correlation between immigration and drug related crimes.
Critique
Milo Bianchi, Paolo Bounanno and Paolo Pinottis article is an exemplary examination of the correlation between immigration and crime. The article challenges to the assumptions that immigration leads to an increase in crime in an area. By first proving that the standard economic theory of crime is not accurate, the article goes further to providing empirical data obtained via research and calculations of OSL estimates. The authors use various variables to ensure that its findings are not subjective or judgmental. To come up with solid evidence of immigration effects on crime rate, the authors begin by analyzing the various factors and variables that could lead to an increase in crime in some provinces and not others. For example, wealth in the Northern provinces could be a contributor to property crime amongst immigrants than in the Southern provinces that could be poorer (Friedberg Hunt, 1995). This article creates a foundation for other researchers to build on and opens up doors for empirical research on the topic.
However, despite the data presented and the extensive estimation and calculations carried out by the authors, the credibility of this paper is refuted by the various claims of the authors pertaining to inadequate data and the complexity of the issue. For example, crime prevalence percentage is calculated after ensuring that all the variables are at equilibrium. Also, the inaccuracy of data caused by unreported crimes and use of heterogeneous laws makes the findings of this article to be inadequate. According to the paper, two years analysis of immigration and crime differs with a ten years analysis. For two years analysis, crime is found to be directly correlated to immigration while for the ten years period, crime percentage rate as a result of immigration is significantly equal to zero. Such conflicting findings call for further and intensive research and analysis in the future.
In essence, the major problem of the article is that it does not carry first hand information, but rather depends on secondary information. The article has used most of the OSLs estimates in coming up with the arguments and conclusions. Data has also been collected from the police. This basically shows that the authors were depending on secondary materials for their information. It is important thus for such a piece of work that data on the same subject has to be collected from the field and then compared with the secondary data, to give a better conclusion.
Conclusion
It is no doubt that immigration have increased in the past years and this trend is expected to continue. However, the question of whether immigration leads to an increase in crime still remains an enigma to many countries. While most people and countries seem to believe that immigration leads to an increase in crime, no empirical evidence can prove this since few researches have been carried out on the same. The article seems to refute that immigration can lead to an increase in crime in an area. However, given the various obstacles weaknesses of the findings, further research is required for a better understanding of this topic.