Immigration and crime

Immigration and crime refers to the relationship between criminal activity and the phenomenon of immigration. The academic literature and official statistics provide mixed findings for the relationship between immigration and crime. Research in the United States tends to suggest that immigration either has no impact on the crime rate or even that immigrants are less prone to crime. A meta-analysis of 51 studies from 1994–2014 on the relationship between immigration and crime in the United States found that, overall, the immigration-crime association is negative, but the relationship is very weak and there is significant variation in findings across studies. This is in line with a 2009 review of high-quality studies conducted in the United States that also found a negative relationship.

Research and statistics in some other, mainly European countries suggest a positive link between immigration and crime: immigrants from particular countries are often overrepresented in crime figures. The over-representation of immigrants in the criminal justice systems of several countries may be due to socioeconomic factors, imprisonment for migration offenses, and racial and ethnic discrimination by police and the judicial system. The relationship between immigration and terrorism is understudied, but existing research is inconclusive. Research on the relationship between refugee migration and crime is scarce and existing empirical evidence is often contradictory. According to statistics from some countries, asylum seekers are overrepresented in crime figures.