Immigration and crime

Immigration and crime refers to perceived or actual relationships between crime and immigration.

Worldwide

The Handbook of Crime Correlates, a 2009 review of studies of statistical aspects of crime, states that most studies on immigrants confirm their greater overall criminality. However, that depends on on their country of origin, as the immigrants from some regions commit less crime than the local citizens. European statistics show higher crime rates among immigrant populations. In the US, however, studies have found lower crime rates among immigrants than among non-immigrants. Also other studies suggest that immigration generally does not lead to an increase in crime, and may in some instances suppress such trends.

Research suggests that legal status largely explains the differences in crime between legal and illegal immigrants, most likely because legal status leads to greater job market opportunities for the immigrants.

Much of the empirical research on the causal relationship between immigration and crime has been limited due to weak instruments for determining causality. The problem with causality primarily revolves around the location of immigrants being endogenous, which means that immigrants tend to disproportionally locate in deprived areas where crime is higher (because they cannot afford to stay in more expensive areas) or because they tend to locate in areas where there is a large population of residents of the same ethnic background. A burgeoning literature relying on strong instruments provides mixed findings. As one economist describes the existing literature in 2014, "most research for the US indicates that if any, this association is negative... while the results for Europe are mixed for property crime but no association is found for violent crime".

Asia

Japan

Further information: Demographics of Japan and Crime in Japan

Because a significantly larger proportion of foreigners in Japan (especially the Chinese) commit crimes than the Japanese do, the public consider the immigrants to contribute to the crime increase. Some highly publicized crimes by organized groups of Chinese (often with help of Japanese organized crime) have led to this stereotype. African migrants commit, on a per capita basis, 2.8 times, while the Russian and Chinese immigrants 2.5 times more crimes and offenses than Japanese natives.

Europe

Further information: Immigration to Europe and List of countries by immigrant population

The issue of immigrant crime plays an important role in the political debate in European countries. A 2015 study found that the increase in immigration flows into western European countries that took place in the 2000s did "not affect crime victimization, but it is associated with an increase in the fear of crime, the latter being consistently and positively correlated with the natives’ unfavourable attitude toward immigrants."

Denmark

Further information: Immigration to Denmark and Crime in Denmark

A report by Statistics Denmark published in 2014 found that among the males between 20 and 24, the children of non-Western immigrants had a crime rate 2.6 times greater than those of native Danes: they were more than twice as likely to be convicted of a violent crime than citizens of Danish origin. Also, even after for controlling for age and socioeconomic status, persons whose ethnic background is from Morocco, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq commit crimes 1.5 to 2.5 more often than average.

Finland

Further information: Immigration to Finland and Crime in Finland

According to official statistics, 27.0% of rapes have been committed by foreigners in Finland, while they comprise 2.2% of the population.

Additionally, Finnish rapists are more likely to be known personally by the victim, increasing the threshold to report. Furthermore, there are great asymmetries between nationalities of rapists: while in 1998 there were no rapists hailing from Vietnam or China, there were many from other countries; 10 times more "foreign-looking" men were accused of rape than the overall percentage of foreigners in Finland.

France

Further information: Immigration to France and Crime in France

A 2009 study found "that the share of immigrants in the population has no significant impact on crime rates once immigrants’ economic circumstances are controlled for, while finding that unemployed immigrants tend to commit more crimes than unemployed non-immigrants."

Germany

Further information: Immigration to Germany and Crime in Germany

The immigration of more than 3 million people of German descent to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a significant increase in crime. The effects were strongest in regions with high unemployment, high preexisting crime levels or large shares of foreigners.

521 Moroccans, 260 Algerians, and 57 Tunisians have registered in Cologne as immigrants between October 2014 and November 2015. Internal police figures show that 40% of these Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians have been arrested for crimes.

In November, 2015 the German police announced that refugees were not responsible for a disproportionate rise in crime in Germany, actually committing less than is average in German society. According to the conservative newspaper Die Welt the most common crime committed by refugees was not paying fares on public transportation. Less than 1% of all crimes committed by refugees were sex crimes.

DW reported in 2006 that in Berlin, young male immigrants are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than their German peers. Whereas the Gastarbeiter in the 50s and 60s did not have an elevated crime rate, second- and third-generation of immigrants had significantly higher crime rates. Following the New Year's Eve sexual assaults and robbery in Germany the British Tabloid Daily Mail published an article titled, "Why Germany can't face the truth about migrant sex attacks: SUE REID finds a nation in denial as a wave of horrific attacks is reported across Europe" in which it stated that according to 2015 data on Baden-Wurttemberg, the asylum seekers, which make up 1% of the population, were involved in 5% of all registered crimes, including grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, and domestic burglary. The highest number of such offenders were Syrians, committing 1% of all state offences.

Greece

Further information: Immigration to Greece and Crime in Greece

Illegal immigration to Greece has increased rapidly over the past several years. Tough immigration policies in Spain and Italy and agreements with their neighboring African countries to combat illegal immigration have changed the direction of African immigration flows toward Greece. At the same time, flows from Asia and the Middle East — mainly Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bangladesh — to Greece appear to have increased as well. By 2012 it was estimated that more than 1 million illegal immigrants entered Greece. The evidence now indicates that nearly all illegal immigration to the European Union flows through the country's porous borders. In 2010, 90 percent of all apprehensions for unauthorized entry into the European Union took place in Greece, compared to 75 percent in 2009 and 50 percent in 2008.

In 2010, 132,524 persons were arrested for "illegal entry or stay" in Greece, a sharp increase from 95,239 in 2006. Nearly half of those arrested (52,469) were immediately deported, the majority of them being Albanians. Official statistics show that immigrants are responsible for about half of the criminal activity in Greece.

Netherlands

Further information: Immigration to the Netherlands

Non-native Dutch youths, especially young Antillean and Surinamese Rotterdammers, commit more crimes than the average. More than half of Moroccan-Dutch male youths aged 18 to 24 years in Rotterdam have ever been investigated by the police, as compared to close to a quarter of native male youths. Eighteen percent of foreign-born young people aged from 18 to 24 have been investigated for crimes.

According to a 2009 report commissioned by Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, 63% of the 447 teenagers convicted of serious crime are children of parents born outside the Netherlands. All these cases concern crime for which the maximum jail sentence is longer than eight years, such as robbery with violence, extortion, arson, public acts of violence, sexual assault, manslaughter and murder. The ethnic composition of the perpetrators was: native Dutch - 37%; Moroccans - 14%; Unknown origin - 14%; "other non-Westerners" - 9%; Turkish - 8%; Surinamese - 7%; Antillean - 7%; and "other Westerners" - 4%. In the majority of cases, the judges did not consider the serious offences to be grave enough to necessitate an unconditional jail sentence.

Analysis of police data for 2002 by ethnicity showed that 37.5 percent of all crime suspects living in the Netherlands were of foreign origin (including those of the second generation), almost twice as high as the share of immigrants in the Dutch population. The highest rates per capita were found among first and second generation male migrants of a non‐Western background. Of native male youths between the ages of 18 and 24, in 2002 2.2% were arrested, of all immigrant males of the same age 4.4%, of second generation non-Western males 6.4%. The crime rates for so‐called ‘Western migrants’ were very close to those of the native Dutch. In all groups, the rates for women were considerably lower than for men, lower than one percent, with the highest found among second generation non‐western migrants, 0.9% (Blom et al. 2005: 31).

Norway

See also: Immigration to Norway § Crime, and Crime in Norway

According to a 2011 report by Statistics Norway, in 2009 first,-generation immigrants from Africa were three times more likely than ethnic Norwegians (or rather individuals who are neither first- nor second-generation immigrants) to be convicted of a felony while Somali immigrants in particular being 4.4 times more likely to be convicted of a felony than an ethnic Norwegian was. Similarly, Iraqis and Pakistanis were found to have rates of conviction for felonies greater than ethnic Norwegians by a factor of 3 and 2.6 respectively. Another finding was that second-generation African and Asian immigrants had a higher rate of convictions for felonies than first-generation immigrants. While first-generation African immigrants had conviction rates for felonies of 16.7 per 1,000 individuals over the age of 15, for second-generation immigrants the rate was 28 per 1,000 – an increase of over 60%. And for Asian immigrants an increase from 9.3 per 1,000 to 17.1 per 1,000 was observed. In 2010 13% of sexual crimes charges were filed against first generation immigrants who make up 7.8% of the population – a rate of overrepresentaion of 1.7. Unfortunately, no data is available on sexual crime that is broken down by ethnic background.

Immigrants are also overrepresented in sexual crime statistics. In a news report in 2010, a spokesperson for the Oslo Police Department stated that every case of assault rapes in Oslo in the years 2007, 2008 and 2009 was committed by a non-Western immigrant. This picture has later been nuanced, as only perpetrators in the solved cases were counted, and 4 of the victims in the 16 unsolved cases described the perpetrator as being of Norwegian ethnicity.

The report shows that, of 131 individuals charged with the 152 rapes in which the perpetrator could be identified, 45.8% were of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin while 54.2% were of Norwegian, other European or American origin. In the cases of "assault rape", i.e. rape aggravated by physical violence, a category that included 6 of the 152 cases and 5 of the 131 identified individuals, the 5 identified individuals were of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin. In the cases of assault rape where the individual responsible was not identified and the police relied on the description provided by the victim, "8 of the perpetrators were African / dark-skinned appearance, 4 were Western / light / Nordic and 4 had an Asian appearance".

Spain

Further information: Immigration to Spain and Crime in Spain

The rates of crimes committed by immigrants are substantially higher than nationals. The arrival of immigrants has resulted in a lack of progress in the reduction of offences against property and in a minor increase in the number of offences against Collective Security (i.e. drugs and trafficking). In the case of nationals, their contribution to the increase in the crime rate is primarily concentrated in offences against persons. Econometric results confirm the result even after controlling for all the observed socioeconomic and demographic factors. A report indicates that a higher proportions of American, non-UE European, and African immigrants tend to widen the crime differential, the effect being larger for the latter ones.

The same paper generally supports that labur market related conditions seem to supersede other potential explanations for the relationship between crime and immigration. However, given the limitations of the dataset and the available statistics of crime in Spain, the econometric analysis cannot exclude other alternative explanations such as ethnical related activities or misperceptions about the law. Cultural differences were statistically detected, endorsing the view that some communities of immigrants might not see Spanish criminal law as a body of rules that captures their own views of society.

Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) published a study that analyzes records in the Register of Convicted in 2008. The data show that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics: 70% of all crimes were committed by Spaniards and 30% by foreigners. Foreigners make up 15% of the population.

Switzerland

Further information: Immigration to Switzerland and Crime in Switzerland § Immigrant criminality

In Switzerland, 69.7% of the prison population did not have Swiss citizenship, compared to 22.1% of total resident population (as of 2008). The figure of arrests by residence status is not usually made public. In 1997, when there were for the first time more foreigners than Swiss among the convicts under criminal law (out of a fraction of 20.6% of the total population at the time), a special report was compiled by the Federal Department of Justice and Police (published in 2001) which for the year 1998 found an arrest rate per 1000 adult population of 2.3 for Swiss citizens, 4.2 for legally resident aliens and 32 for asylum seekers. 21% of arrests made concerned individuals with no residence status, who were thus either sans papiers or "crime tourists" without any permanent residence in Switzerland.

The term Ausländerkriminalität ("foreigner criminality") since the 1990s has become a politically charged term, with the populist "black sheep" campaign for the "initiative for the extradition of criminal foreigners" of the Swiss People's Party making international headlines in September 2007.

In 2010, a statistic was published which listed delinquency by nationality (based on 2009 data). To avoid distortions due to demographic structure, only the male population aged between 18 and 34 was considered for each group. From the study, it became clear that crime rate is highly correlated on the country of origin of the various migrant groups. Thus, immigrants from Germany, France and Austria had a significantly lower crime rate than Swiss citizens (60% to 80%), while immigrants from Angola, Nigeria and Algeria had a crime rate of above 600% of that of Swiss population. In between these extremes were immigrants from Former Yugoslavia, with crime rates of between 210% and 300% of the Swiss value.

In April 2010, the director of the Federal Office for Migration (BFM), Alard du Bois-Reymond, issued a statement on the large number of unfounded requests for asylum by nationals of Nigeria in particular. Du Bois-Reymond said that 99.5% of asylum seekers of Nigerian origin were abusing the asylum system, entering Switzerland with the intention of pursuing petty crime and drug dealing. The Nigerian ambassador to Switzerland, Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, objected to du Boi-Reymond's statement as an undue generalization.

Sweden

Further information: Immigration to Sweden and Crime in Sweden

A report studying 4.4 million Swedes between the ages of 15 and 51 during the period 1997-2001 found that 25% of crimes were committed by foreign-born individuals while an additional 20% were committed by individuals born to foreign-born parents. In particular, immigrants from Africa and Southern and Western Asian were more likely to be charged of a crime than individuals born to two Swedish parents by a factor of 4.5 and 3.5 respectively. Findings from a previous study published by the Swedish government in 1996 determined that between 1985 and 1989 individuals born in Iraq, North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia), and Africa (excluding Uganda and the North African countries) were convicted of rape at rates 20, 23, and 17 greater than individuals born in Sweden respectively.

In a study by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention in 1997-2001, 25% of the almost 1,520,000 offences were found to be committed by people born abroad, while almost 20% were committed by Swedish-born people with a foreign background. In the study, immigrants were found to be four times more likely to be investigated for lethal violence and robbery than ethnic Swedes. In addition, immigrants were three times more likely to be investigated for violent assault, and five times more likely to be investigated for sex crimes. Overall, North Africa and Western Asia were strongly overrepresented in the crime statistics. The report is based on statistics for those "suspected" of offences, but Stina Holmberg of the Council for Crime Prevention said that there was "little difference" in the statistics for those suspected of crimes and those actually convicted. "Slightly under 60 percent of the almost 1,520,000 offences ... registered during the period covered by the study can be attributed to persons who were born in Sweden to two Swedish-born parents," it said.

A 2013 study found that both first- and second-generation immigrants have a higher rate of suspected offences than indigenous Swedes. While first-generation immigrants have the highest offender rate, the offenders have the lowest average number of offenses, which indicates that there is a high rate of low-rate offending (many suspected offenders with only one single registered offense). The rate of chronic offending (offenders suspected of several offenses) is higher among indigenous Swedes than first-generation immigrants. Second-generation immigrants have higher rates of chronic offending than first-generation immigrants but lower total offender rates.

A study of the gap in registered crime between the children of immigrants and the children of native Swedes found that "for males, we are able to explain between half and three-quarters of the gap in crime by reference to parental socio-economic resources and neighbourhood segregation. For females, we can explain even more, sometimes the entire gap." The authors furthermore found "that culture is unlikely to be a strong cause of crime among immigrants".

United Kingdom

See also: Modern immigration to the United Kingdom and Race and crime in the United Kingdom

On 30 June 2013 there were 10,786 prisoners from 160 different countries in the jails of England and Wales. Poland, Jamaica and the Irish Republic formed the highest percentage of foreign nationals in UK prisons. In total, foreigners represented 13% of the prison population.

Ministry of Justice statistics show that in 2009 foreign nationals comprised 13.7% of the total prison population in England and Wales (foreign nationals are 13% of the total population in England and Wales). During the 2000s, there was an 111% increase of foreign nationals in UK prisons. According to one study, "there is little evidence to support the theory that the foreign national prison population continues to grow because foreign nationals are more likely to commit crime than are British citizens or more likely to commit crime of a serious nature". The increase may partly be due to the disproportionate number of convicted for drug offences; crimes associated with illegal immigration (fraud and forgery of government documents, and immigration offences); ineffective deportation provisions; and a lack of viable options to custody (which affects bail and sentencing decision making).

Research finds no causal link between immigration and crime in the UK. One study based on evidence from England and Wales in the 2000s found no causal impact of immigration on crime in England and Wales. No causal impact either on London, which saw large immigration changes. A study of two large waves of immigration to the UK (the late 1990s/early 2000s asylum seekers and the post-2004 inflow from EU accession countries) found that the "first wave led to a modest but significant rise in property crime, while the second wave had a small negative impact. There was no effect on violent crime; arrest rates were not different, and changes in crime cannot be ascribed to crimes against immigrants. The findings are consistent with the notion that differences in labor market opportunities of different migrant groups shape their potential impact on crime." A 2013 study found "that crime is significantly lower in those neighborhoods with sizeable immigrant population shares" and that "the crime reducing effect is substantially enhanced if the enclave is composed of immigrants from the same ethnic background." A 2014 study, which takes account of under-reporting of crimes, even found that "that immigrants who are located in London and black immigrants are significantly less criminally active than their native counterparts".

It was reported in 2007 that more than one-fifth of solved crimes in London was committed by immigrants. Around a third of all solved, reported sex offences and a half of all solved, reported frauds in the capital were carried out by non-British citizens. A 2008 study found that the crime rate of Eastern European immigrants was the same as that of the indigenous population.

Italy

36% of all prisoners in Italy's jails are foreigners.

According to official statistics, immigrants committed 35% of crimes in Italy in 2007, "but analysts and opposition parties say many of these are related to breaches in immigration rules, and that foreigners have often been unfairly targeted".

A study of immigration to Italy during the period 1990-2003 found that "immigration increases only the incidence of robberies, while leaving unaffected all other types of crime. Since robberies represent a very minor fraction of all criminal offenses, the effect on the overall crime rate is not significantly different from zero." A study of Italy before and after the January 2007 European Union enlargement found that giving legal status to the previously illegal immigrants from the new EU members states led to a "50 percent reduction in recidivism". The authors find that "legal status... explains one-half to two-thirds of the observed differences in crime rates between legal and illegal immigrants". Research also shows that stricter enforcement of migration policy leads to a reduction in the crime rate of undocumented migrants.

Illegal immigrants are the 80% of immigrants involved in criminal activities, and their share of total foreign residents is well below 20%. In short, the probability of committing crimes for illegal aliens is 16 times that of legal immigrants. The condition of illegality might increase the risk of involvement in criminal activities, as it precludes access to legitimate revenue opportunities. As possible evidence, examining the regularization and the so-called "click day" 2007, after an amnesty the crime rate decreased, particularly in the provinces where a larger share of irregular foreigners got permission to stay. Therefore the refusal of a residence permit (and therefore legal status) for the mere fact of having submitted the application with just a few minutes late doubles or triples the chances of committing crimes. If the presence of illegals in last decades resulted on one hand from difficulties and bureacracy in registering as a legal immigrant and from quotas necessary to manage immigration (and subject to debate due to increase immigration pressure), it is on the other hand the result of failing management of illegal immigration and of continued presence of immigrants in the country's territory while on an illegal status. The presence of illegal immigrants, while an important factor statistics, is only one of the factors that could explain the correlation between immigration and crime.

Legal immigrants' crime rate is higher than Italians' crime rate, between 1.23% and 1.4%, compared to 0.75% of Italians' crime rate, and It is lower between people over 40 years old, comparable data considering that immigrants have a lower average age, in particular: for people aged 18–44 years old, it is 1.50% for Italians and 1.89% for legal immigrants ; for people aged 45–64 years, it is 0.65% for Italians and 0.44% for legal immigrants ; for those over 65 years old, it is 0.12% for both Italians and legal immigrants . But taking into account the different legal status of foreigners, 16.9% of the complaints against legal immigrants can be connected directly or indirectly to the immigration law, therefore the general crime rate among Italians and legal immigrants becomes substantially equal: 1.02% for Italians, 1.03% for legal immigrants and even lower than Italians' crime rate if all the age categories are compared singularly .< The presence of a mostly younger immigration demography in the country is therefore a factor in the higher rate of immgrants' crime, together with the presence of illegal immigrants in the country..

According to Interior Ministry 2007 data Romanians, Moroccans and Albanians commit the most crimes (considering legal and illegal immigrants). The three ethnicities are also the prevalent minorities in Italy. Regarding murders, Romanians are in first place (15.4% of the total number of foreigners reported for this offense), followed by Albanians (11.9%) and Moroccans (9.1%). For sexual violence, Romanians are in the lead (representing 16.2% of the total number of foreigners reported for this offense), followed by Moroccans (15.9%) and Croats (13.9%), perpetrators of rape are of Italian nationality in 60.9 percent of cases. For home robberies, still in command Romanians (19.8%), followed by Albanians (13.8%) and Moroccans (8.7%).For muggings Moroccans are in first place (20.6%), followed by Romanians (19.3%) and Albanians (6%). As for car theft, Romanians return to the top (29.8%), followed by Moroccans (13.2%) and Albanians (8.8%). For extortion, finally, still Romanians (15%), followed by Albanians (11.2%) and Moroccans (10.7%).

United States

See also: Immigration and crime in the United States and Race and crime in the United States

One of the first political analyses in the USA of the relationship between immigration and crime was performed in the beginning of the 20th century by the Dillingham Commission, which confirmed this relationship especially for immigrants from non-Northern European countries, resulting in the sweeping 1920s immigration reduction acts, including the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which favored immigration from northern and western Europe.

In the 21st century, however, The Handbook of Crime Correlates states that unlike studies outside the US, a majority of studies in the US have found lower crime rates among immigrants than among non-immigrants. Again, the country of migrant's origin is more important than the legality of immigration itself.

One study suggests that increases in immigration between 1990 and 2000 may partly explain the reduction in the US crime rate.

Research finds that Secure Communities, an immigration enforcement program which led to a quarter of a million of detentions (when the study was published; November 2014), had no observable impact on the crime rate.

Australia

Further information: Immigration to Australia and Crime in Australia

The alleged link between immigration and criminality has been a longstanding meme in Australian history with many of the original immigrants being convicts. During the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of emigrants to the country arrived from Italy and Greece, and were shortly afterwards associated with local crime. This culminated in the "Greek conspiracy case" of the 1970s, when Greek physicians were accused of defrauding the Medibank system. The police were later found to have conducted investigations improperly, and the doctors were eventually cleared of all charges. After the demise of the White Australia policy restricting non-European immigration, the first large settler communities from Asia emerged. This development was accompanied by a moral panic regarding a potential spike in criminal activity by the Triads and similar organizations. In 1978, the erstwhile weekly The National Times also reported on involvement in the local drug trade by Calabrian Italian, Turkish, Lebanese and Chinese dealers.

Discourse surrounding immigrant crime reached a head in the late 1990s. The fatal stabbing of a Korean teenager in Punchbowl in October 1998 followed by a drive-by shooting of the Lakemba police station prompted then New South Wales Premier Bob Carr and NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan to blame the incidents on Lebanese gangs. Spurred on by the War on Terror, immigrant identities became increasingly criminalized in the popular Sydney media. By the mid-2000s and the outbreak of the Cronulla riots, sensationalist broadcast and tabloid media representations had reinforced existing stereotypes of immigrant communities as criminal entities and ethnic enclaves as violent and dangerous areas.

The only reliable statistics on immigrant crime in Australia are based on imprisonment rates by place of birth. As of 1999, this data indicated that immigrants from Vietnam (2.7 per 1,000 of population), Lebanon (1.6) and New Zealand (1.6) were over-represented within the national criminal justice system. Compared to the Australian-born (1), immigrants from Italy (0.6), the United Kingdom (0.6), Ireland (0.6) and Greece (0.5) were under-represented.

In the late 2000s, following a series of arrests in Melbourne on terrorism-related charges, Australian security officials expressed concerns of possible attacks by Al-Qaeda-affiliated extremists from North Africa. Victoria Police department officers also claimed in 2012 that Sudanese and Somali immigrants were around five times more likely to commit crimes than other state residents. Internal police figures asserted that the rate of offending in the Sudanese community was 7109.1 per 100,000 individuals, whereas it was said to be 6141.8 per 100,000 for Somalis, and 1301.0 per 100,000 for the wider Victoria community. Robbery and assault were alleged to have been the most common types of crime committed by the Sudanese and Somali residents, with assault purported to represent 29.5% and 24.3% of all offences, respectively. However, the overall proportion of crime in the state said to have been committed by members of the Sudanese community was only 0.92 percent, while it was reportedly 0.35 percent for Somali residents. The police also stated that individuals arrested and charged might have been falsely claiming to belong to each community, and that it was meeting with local representatives as part of a civic engagement strategy.

In 2010, six applicants brought charges of impropriety against several members of the Victorian Police, the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, and the State of Victoria in the Melbourne areas of Flemington and Kensington. The ensuing Haile-Michael v Konstantinidis case alleged various forms of mistreatment by the public officials in violation of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. In March 2012, an order of discovery was made, whereby established statistician Ian Gordon of the University of Melbourne independently analysed Victorian Police LEAP data from Flemington and North Melbourne (2005-2008). The report concluded that residents from Africa were two and a half times more likely to be subjected to an arbitrary "stop and search" than their numbers in the area would suggest is appropriate. Although the justification provided for such disproportionate policing measures was over-representation in local crime statistics, the study found that the same police LEAP data in reality showed that male immigrants from Africa on average committed substantially less crime than male immigrants from other backgrounds. Despite this, the latter alleged male offenders were observed to be 8.5 times more likely not to be the subject of a police "field contact". The case was eventually settled on 18 February 2013, with a landmark agreement that the Victoria Police would publicly review its "field contact" and training processes. The inquiry is expected to help police identify areas where discrimination in the criminal justice system has the potential to or does occur; implement institutional reforms as pre-emptive measures in terms of training, policy and practice; predicate changes on international law enforcement best practices; ammeliorate the local police's interactions with new immigrants and ethnic minorities, as well as with the Aboriginal community; and serve as a benchmark for proper conduct vis-a-vis other police departments throughout the country.

The political consequences of a perceived connection between immigration and crime

Research suggests that the perception that there is a positive causal link between immigration and crime leads to greater support for anti-immigration parties.

See also

• Opposition to immigration
• Race and crime
• Überfremdung
• Youth bulge

Further reading

• Martínez, Ramiro; Valenzuela, Abel. (eds) (2006). Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity, and Violence. New York University Press.
• Rubén G. Rumbaut; Walter A. Ewing, The Myth of Immigrant Criminality special report for the Immigration Policy Center, 2007.