Key points:
- Immigrants in the US have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans.
- Native-born Americans are 267% more likely to be incarcerated by age 33 than immigrants.
- Immigrants had lower incarceration rates across every racial and ethnic group.
A new study from the Cato Institute finds that immigrants in the United States are far less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans, adding new weight to years of research debunking claims that immigration drives crime.
The report, authored by Cato scholars Alex Nowrasteh and Krit Chanwong, examined incarceration risks using annual cross-section data from the American Community Survey (ACS) one-year microdata covering the period 2006 to 2023. They focused on individuals born in 1990 and tracked whether they had ever been incarcerated by age 33. The findings, according to the study, are stark. Eleven percent of native-born Americans in that cohort had been incarcerated, compared with only three percent of immigrants. That means native-born Americans were 267 percent more likely to have been incarcerated by age 33 than immigrants.
“Immigrants are less likely to be criminals than native-born Americans,” the authors wrote, underscoring the consistency of their findings across multiple demographic breakdowns and datasets.
The study, which emulated methods from a 2023 paper on declining American incarceration rates by Jason P. Robey, Michael Massoglia, and Michael T. Light, measured cumulative incarceration rates by race, ethnicity, and immigration status. The results were clear: immigrants had lower incarceration risks than native-born Americans across every racial and ethnic group.
Hispanic, Asian, Black, and white immigrants all had lower incarceration rates than white native-born Americans, the study reported. Among these groups, Asian undocumented immigrants had the lowest risk at about 0.08 percent. “All (legal plus illegal) Hispanic, Asian, black, and white immigrants as groups each have a lower incarceration rate than white native-born Americans,” the study noted.
The data also showed significant regional disparities, with immigrants less likely to be incarcerated in every region of the country. The differences were most dramatic in the South. According to the report, native-born residents in that region had an incarceration rate almost ten times higher than legal immigrants and nearly double the rate of undocumented immigrants.
These findings were not isolated to the 1990 cohort. The study included comparisons across different years of birth, showing that at age 33, immigrants in every birth year analyzed had lower incarceration rates than their native-born counterparts. The researchers also used individual-level logistic regression models controlling for demographic factors such as age, race, and state. They found that, when controlled for these factors, immigrants were 48 percent less likely to be newly incarcerated compared with native-born Americans.
The authors acknowledged that deportation could play a role in explaining some of the disparity. Noncitizen offenders who are incarcerated are often deported after serving their sentences, meaning they will not appear in later U.S. surveys that ask whether someone has ever been incarcerated. Still, they emphasized that the consistency of the data across regions, cohorts, and demographic categories makes it unlikely that deportation alone accounts for the dramatic differences.
The report also drew international comparisons, noting that patterns in the United States differ from those in some European countries. In Denmark, for example, immigrants are more likely to be incarcerated than native-born Danes. The study suggested that differences in labor force participation may explain the discrepancy. Immigrants in Denmark tend to have lower labor force participation rates than native-born Danes, while in the United States immigrants generally participate in the labor market at higher rates than native-born Americans. Employment, researchers noted, is strongly associated with lower levels of criminal behavior.
“Scholars have long noticed that employed immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes than unemployed ones,” the report stated. Differences in cultural or institutional factors, such as the nature of the criminal justice systems in different countries, may also help explain the variations.
The study builds on a long line of Cato research into immigration and crime. Previous work from the think tank has examined arrest and conviction rates for undocumented immigrants in Texas, immigrant involvement in drunk driving and mass shootings, as well as terrorism and politically motivated violence. In each of these areas, Cato has consistently found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
By focusing on lifetime incarceration risk, this new study adds another layer to that body of evidence. It also highlights that the disparity persists regardless of immigrants’ legal status, race or ethnicity, year of birth, or region of residence in the United States.
“Regardless, immigrants in the United States have a lower incarceration risk than native-born Americans by age 33, and their legal status, race or ethnicity, year of birth, and region of settlement in the United States do not change that outcome,” the report concluded.
The findings come at a time when immigration remains one of the most politically charged issues in the United States. Opponents of immigration often raise concerns about public safety and crime, but research like this complicates those arguments by showing that immigrants, as a group, are incarcerated at significantly lower rates.
For Nowrasteh and Chanwong, the evidence is clear. Decades of data show that immigrants are not driving crime in the United States. Instead, their lower incarceration rates suggest that the common political narrative connecting immigration and crime is deeply misleading.
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
