IRVINE, Calif. — A UC Irvine professor was recently awarded the Stockholm Prize for Criminology for her research, the most prestigious honor in the field. Dr. Charis Kubrin, along with co-winner Dr. Mark Lipsey, received the award for their studies on immigration and crime, research that has become the subject of heated public debate because it contradicts narratives advanced by the current presidential administration.
In an interview with the Davis Vanguard newsgroup, Kubrin explained her findings and discussed how they should be understood and applied in the United States today.
Kubrin began her academic career at Smith College and later earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. After completing her doctorate, she joined UC Irvine, where she currently teaches criminology and sociology.
Her research has focused on debunking one of the most persistent myths in contemporary political discourse: the claim that immigration increases crime rates. Kubrin’s work has directly challenged the theory that immigrants drive higher levels of criminal activity.
Kubrin’s interest in studying immigration and crime began after the publication of an op-ed that argued national crime rates were declining, in part, because of increased immigration. After reviewing the research cited by the op-ed’s author, she found that multiple studies showed that “immigrants have lower crime rates than the native born, and immigration to an area, if anything, causes crime to go down rather than up.”
Despite the evidence supporting this conclusion, she said public perception remains sharply misaligned with the research. “The public perception on how immigration and crime are related is really just the polar opposite,” Kubrin said. Ultimately, she noted, the belief that immigrants cause crime has remained widespread across the country.
Motivated by this disconnect, Kubrin began conducting her own research on the relationship between immigration and crime. While the op-ed she initially reviewed focused on Chicago, Kubrin expanded the scope to examine whether the findings applied more broadly.
She ultimately published two papers, one analyzing the generalizability of prior findings and another offering an empirical analysis of immigration and crime during the crime drop of the 1990s. Her research confirmed the conclusions reached by earlier studies, finding that immigration is associated with lower crime rates.
Kubrin also demonstrated that these findings were not limited to a single city or region. By using national data sets, she showed that the inverse relationship between immigration and crime held across multiple contexts.
Kubrin’s studies have challenged the narrative that immigrants are inherently criminal, a claim that has been amplified in recent years by the current presidential administration. Her research found no positive correlation between immigration and crime rates and suggested instead that higher levels of immigration are associated with decreases in crime.
Over the past year, as the Trump administration has pursued policies and rhetoric targeting immigrants, Kubrin said she has faced significant backlash for presenting her findings. Despite the absence of evidence linking immigration to higher crime, she argued that the criminalization of immigrants continues to dominate public discourse.
Since the publication of her research and the announcement of the Stockholm Prize, Kubrin said she has received negative responses and hateful messages from people who reject her conclusions.
When asked how the administration’s agenda has affected her work, Kubrin said increased political rhetoric has made both research and public discussion more difficult. “I think with the increased rhetoric and politicization of immigration, and the blaming of immigrants for the crime problem in American society, it has created a context in which both doing this research and speaking about this research has become more challenging,” she said.
She acknowledged that presenting data in an environment where immigration has become a flashpoint in national politics is difficult, but emphasized that the public deserves access to evidence-based findings.
Asked about current law enforcement strategies that target immigrants as a means of reducing crime, Kubrin argued that such approaches are ineffective. “These policies and practices actually don’t make communities safer,” she said.
Kubrin pointed to what she described as the “devolution of immigration,” a shift in which immigration enforcement has moved from being primarily a federal responsibility to one increasingly carried out by local authorities. She said this shift has required local officials to police their own communities for immigration violations.
Collaborations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement agencies reflect this change, Kubrin said, but she views these partnerships as counterproductive. She argued that targeting people who are often only accused of immigration-related offenses diverts resources away from genuine public safety concerns and damages trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
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She is an excellent instructor too.
Honestly, any statistics regarding those in the country illegally (already a crime) should be taken with the understanding that they’re less likely to report it (and are probably the most-likely to be victimized by their fellow illegal immigrants).
Perhaps similar to the reason that we don’t hear much about crime within prison walls.
This does NOT mean that it’s a good situation for victims or for societies which welcome illegal immigration (as the U.S. did). The reason for that “welcome” has almost nothing to do with concern for illegal immigrants, themselves, despite the ingrained “marketing campaign” which tells us otherwise.
This, of course, includes school districts who get paid by the state regardless of immigration/resident status of students. It’s all about “butts in the chairs”, for them.