The presence of immigrants in a given area reduces crime, which goes against public perceptions, warned this Thursday, December 25th, the North American researcher and recent winner of the world’s biggest criminology prize Charis Kubrin.
In an interview with Lusa, the criminologist explained that “all reports show that crime is always lower among immigrants compared to natives”, so, “in a continuous analysis of data”, what “mass immigration to an area causes is a decrease in crime”.
The Stockholm 2026 prize was awarded to the researcher from the Californian University of Irvine for a data meta-analysis that brought together all the studies carried out and data collected on the relationship between immigration and crime, with clear conclusions that contradict the most populist perceptions and discourses.
Her analysis was carried out only in the United States, but Charis Kubrin believes that the data can be extrapolated to the European case, highlighting that inequality or social exclusion contributes more to crime than the nationality of the perpetrators.
“My work examines how crime and immigration are related and I have studied this topic for the last 25 years”but the relationship between the two themes “has been studied for almost a century, since the 1930s”.
“The first report is from 1931 and here’s a spoiler: it was already concluded that there is no relationship between more immigrants and more crimes”recalled the researcher.
In the last 20 years, there has been an “unprecedented increase in research on this topic and the conclusions are always the same”, according to the meta-analysis carried out which now gave him the Stockholm prize, announced in November.
“We reviewed all the studies carried out on the relationship between crime and immigration and all types of crime. With some specific exceptions, immigration and crime do not go hand in hand”he explained.
However, “there is a huge difference between what people believe or think they understand and the data”and it is necessary for science to be heard by politicians, but also by society.
“People feel like these are unprecedented times”but the “US has a long history of blaming immigrants for society’s problems, particularly crime” and this permanent vision ends up “feeding rhetoric that pressures politicians to accuse foreigners of depleting society’s resources”.
The USA has always had problems related to “nativism, xenophobia and racism” and, today, the racial issue is “more evident, because the “majority of immigrants are darker in color”.
Therefore, anti-immigrant discourse is more related to racism or xenophobia than to an effective concern with social problems.
“This is nothing new because there is always this latent feeling” against foreigners, who want to “blame themselves for America’s problems”, such as “inequality or crime”.
“It is very easy to accuse immigrants and create the narrative that they are responsible for the problems and capitalize on political support for this argument”a strategy in which the media are complicit.
“The media plays a big role in this discourse and amplifies prejudices and propagates false narratives, because if an immigrant commits a crime in the USA it will be spread everywhere”but this “doesn’t happen if you’re a native”.
Therefore, it is “it is necessary for science to enter public discourse and help define public policies”considered the Irvine researcher, who says she tries to do her part in this process.
“What I try to do is try to get involved with politicians and authors of public policies”looking for “partnerships with institutions and organizations that care about the facts while designing policies for immigrants”he explained.
“It’s a drop in the ocean, but it’s what I feel I can do in this context”he added.
In addition to Charis Kubrin, the Stockholm prize was awarded to Mark Lipsey, for his research into the role of rehabilitation in prisoners.