Illegal Immigrants Cause 21% of Crime
May 1, 2008: This post is obsolete and wrong in places. For something better, go to:
http://rasmusen.org/t/2008/04/illegal-immigrants-cause-21-of-crime.html
I just ran the numbers to see how much crime is caused by illegal immigrants. I conclude that they cause about 21% of it, a crime rate 6 time that of legal residents, meaning that illegal immigrants cause 3,360 murders, 19,950 rapes, 450,000 burglaries, and 1.45 million serious thefts, besides other categories of crimes.
Here’s my methodology, since this kind of data, despite its obvious importance, isn’t available readily from the government, no doubt as part of the general policy of nonenforcement of immigration laws. My source notes are at the end of this post.
In 2005 there were 10.5 million illegal aliens, according to the government, including about 264,000 in jail and prison for non-immigration crimes. That’s an incarceration rate of 2.5%.
The total population was 296,639,000, including 1,496,000 in jail and prison, for an incarceration rate of 0.50%. Subtracting out illegals, the non-illegal population is then 286,139,000, with 1,235,000 in jail and prison, for an incarceration rate of 0.43%.
21.4% of inmates are thus illegal, and I assume that illegal immigrant criminals are caught and incarcerated at the same rate as domestic ones, and that no criminals are illegal immigrants except those identified in my data source, which is the number of prisoners who have committed at least two misdemeanors that state and local government find out are illegal and ask the federal government for reimbursement for. There are probably more; I don’t know how many.
Then I just multiply the amount of different categories of crimes by 21% to get the number committed by illegal immigrants.
Illegal Alien Invasion Deadlier Than Iraq by Mac Johnson did the calculations a very different way and came up with an estimate of 1,480 murders by year by illegal immigrants. I thought his method (based on crime rates in Mexico, etc.) would be an overestimate, but I see it is less than half of my estimate based on prison records.
The numbers paint a completely different story from the one commonly see in the press under headlines such as “The Myth of Immigrant Criminality” ( “The Myth of Immigrant Criminality,” Harvard Magazine (September-October, 2006) pp. 15-16, discussing Prof. Sampson’s work. See also an article on work by Ruben Rumbaut and Walter Ewing). The reason is simple: the much-cited studies are about legal immigrants, not illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants are by definition unusually law-abiding, and include Indian doctors, Korean grocers, and Mexican grandmothers who are unlikely to be committing many murders and rapes.
Statistical Abstract: crimes: 16 95 401 855 10,328 2,143 6,948 1,237. Multiply each by .21 to get 3,360 fewer murders, 19,950 fewer rapes, 450,000 fewer burglaries, and 1.45 million fewer serious thefts.
Statistical Abstract: 1,496,000 total in prison in 2004.
Statisical Abstract: population in 2005: 296,639,000
* Criminal aliens incarcerated increased from about 42,000 at year-end 2001 to about 49,000 at year-end 2004. [federal prisons only]
* Fiscal year 2002-SCAAP reimbursed all 50 states for incarcerating about 77,000 criminal aliens.
* Fiscal year 2002-SCAAP reimbursed 752 local jurisdictions for incarcerating about 138,000 criminal aliens.
* SCAAP is a Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), program that partially reimburses state and local jurisdictions annually for the cost of incarcerating some but not all criminal aliens illegally in the country. Not all jurisdictions submit for SCAAP reimbursement.
* State and local jurisdictions voluntarily submit data annually on inmates they suspect to be criminal aliens for possible reimbursement. The program reimburses these jurisdictions for criminal aliens who:
-were convicted of a felony or two misdemeanors and incarcerated for a minimum of 4 days and -entered the U.S. without inspection, or were in immigration removal proceedings at the time they were taken into custody; or were admitted as a nonimmigrant and failed to maintain nonimmigrant status.[NOTE 1]
Wikipedia says
The Office of Immigration Statistics in the Department of Homeland Security estimates based on U.S. Census that 10.5 million illegal aliens were living in the United States in May 2005 and that the number grew at a national average of 408,000 a year
June 30th, 2007 at 11:27 am
The big challenge is to get information like this on the public radar screen. Feinstein and Kerry want to censor talk radio because it is one sided, they say. No one mentions the one-sidedness of our leading papers, NYT, WSJ, Washpost, LATimes etc, who are monolithic in support or illegal immigrants and never publish the other side. You might want to check my op ed in the SF Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/06/28/EDG6QQ4T6P1.DTL
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:17 am
Wouldn’t this statistic be an overestimate if the illegal immigrants are in jail for being what they are, illegal immigrants? Also, if they want to keep a low profile, commiting crimes isn’t a good way to do it.
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:45 am
Immigration offenses are federal, and most of the prisoners are state. Also, I believe even the figure for federal prisons excludes immigration offenses– the GAO report was on general criminality of illegal immigrants. I’m not even sure anyone goes to prison for immigration violations— they can be deported, and the Administration is not eager to punish immigration offenses.
July 5th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Criminal Alien and Illegal Alien are not the same.
July 6th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Dave, what an insightful and helpful observation. Boy that really helps to clarify the empirical facts about illegal aliens and their relative contribution to crime in the US! (not)
Charles
July 6th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
I guess hand holding is necessary.
In calculating the percent of crime committed by illegal aliens, Rasmussen used the figure for “criminal aliens” which includes all aliens who are criminals including those that are in the country legally. His estimate therefore is overestimated
July 9th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Soooo…
You start out by saying that
Total prison population: 1,496,000
Total illegal imigrants in prison: 264,000
Then you try an calculate the percentage of illegals in prison. How do we calculate the percentage of illegals in prison given the two numbers above? Hmmm… tough one.
We could start doing “new” math and work out a whole bunch of percentages based on total number of imigrants and US population and hair color and relative hand-to-face ratios.
Or…. we could ask a local fifth-grader:
264,000 out of 1,496,000 is 17.6%.
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THEN, you say that if 21% of prisoners are illegal immigrants (actually 17%, and actully even less than that, if you read below), THEREFORE 21% of rapists and murderers are illegal immigrants. Great assumption! Let’s just throw that in there and hope no one questions that assumption!
If 10% of all criminal were juveniles, would it follow that 10% of all embezzelment was caused by juveniles?
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Finlly, HOW again did you calculate the total number of illegals in prison in 2005?
It seems to me that you took the total number of illegals in prison in 2002, then ADDED that to the total number of illegals in prison in 2004. Does that make any sense at all?
To find the numbers for 2006, should we add the total number in prison in 2003 to the total number in prison in 2005???
August 17th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Assuming that illegals consitute 20 million out of a total U.S. population of 300 million, they are less than 6.7% of the total population. If they constitute 17.6% of the prison population, that means that they are 2.6 times more likely (17.6 / 6.7) to be incarcerated than the average person. If there are actually only 12 million illegals (4% of U.S. population), then they are 4.4 times more likely to be in jail. In either case, that reflects a high crime rate, not a low one. There may be certain other demographic groups with even higher crime rates, but that hardly supports proponents of open borders. Note that working “off the books” is also a crime. The victims are those who work legally and must pay higher taxes, and also those who have to compete in the labor market against those who, off the books, cost much less to employ.
November 1st, 2007 at 11:19 pm
I agree with Sam above that your calculations and assumptions are very biased and skewed. And where are you getting your numbers? Shere are you getting the number that 264,000 are incarcerated illegal immigrants? I traced your statistics to the US Census Bureau, and according to table 336, only 108,300 inmates were of Hispanic origin in 2004. Granted this is excluding some facilities, but the total number of inmates they include is 713,990. Thus it only accounts for half the number (1,496,000) you post. Assuming porportions of race are held constant, this would still only put total Hispanic incarcerations around 224,400. Since this is still an assumption, we could say that this number might plausibly be slightly higher (I couldn’t find total numbers on the website you cite). However, your calculations mean that all if not the majority of Hispanics incarcerated would be illegal immigrants (this based on the fact that the majority of illegal immigrants are Hispanic). Dude, you need to cite your sources more clearly and recalculate your calculations…something is really off.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:08 am
I appreciate the comments that go into the numbers, but they should not so casually charge me with bad faith. Notice that I *do* cite my sources. I don’t have time to check over everything, so I accept that maybe I have made mistakes, but they are not in bad faith. Please do go ahead and check everything, including the arithmetic.
I did take a look and see that even in the post, without going to the original sources, Monica should have been able to see that the figure of 264,000 criminal aliens comes from the GAO report that I quote at length– not from some estimate of the number of Hispanics in prison. Maybe the GAO report is wrong, maybe the Hispanics data is– I don’t know.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am
i loved it it was freakin awesome!
May 21st, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Um, dude, criminal aliens are not all criminal ILLEGAL aliens. They estimate that 66% of the incarcerated criminal aliens are actually illegal immigrants. So your numbers are inflated by 33%.