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Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Group Says Immigrants Are Less Likely|To Commit Crimes Than Natives

SAN FRANCISCO - "Immigrants are far less likely than the average U.S. native to commit crime in California," the Public Policy Institute of California announced in a report released Monday night. "Significantly lower rates of incarceration and institutionalization among foreign-born adults suggest that longstanding fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified," the PPIC said.

Here are some findings in the report, "Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?":

People born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California's adult population but represent only about 17 percent of the state prison population.

U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated in state prisons at rates up to 3.3 times higher than foreign-born men.

Among men ages 18-40 - the age group most likely to commit crime - those born in the United States are 10 times more likely than immigrants to be in county jail or state prison.

Noncitizen men from Mexico ages 18-40 - a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally - are more than 8 times less likely than U.S.-born men in the same age group to be in a correctional setting (0.48% vs. 4.2%).

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