Charis E. Kubrin

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• PhD in Sociology
• Professor (Full) at University of California, Irvine

Are immigration and crime related? This review addresses this question in order to build a deeper understanding of the immigration-crime relationship. We synthesize the recent generation (1994 to 2014) of immigration-crime research focused on macrosocial (i.e., geospatial) units using a two-pronged approach that combines the qualitative method of n...

Rap music has had a contentious relationship with the legal system, including censorship, regulation, and artists being arrested for lewd and profane performances. More recently, rap lyrics have been introduced by prosecutors to establish guilt in criminal trials. Some fear this form of artistic expression will be inappropriately interpreted as lit...

In 1982, when I was 12 years old, I cashed out my piggy bank and made my first big purchase on my own: a cassette tape by rap group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Little did I know this purchase would set me down a path that would change my life forever and bring me right to where I am today-- writing an essay about my research on rap musi...

Issues of race and justice are at the forefront of my TEDx talk, Rap on Trial, which focuses on the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials against young men of color.

Secure Communities is a program launched by the federal government to improve the efficiency of interior immigration enforcement and to enhance the capacity for targeting deportable individuals with criminal convictions, referred to as “criminal aliens.” In particular, Secure Communities provides a system that automatically transmits and checks fin...

Objectives Research on the immigration-crime link has grown substantially yet researchers have not sufficiently considered immigrant heterogeneity, which reflects both the number of immigrant groups in a community and their relative sizes or representation, even as theory has a lot to say regarding the possible impact of such heterogeneity. With fe...

Research finds that immigration and crime are not related across neighbourhoods, contrary to social disorganization theory and consistent with the immigration revitalization thesis. This research, however, is largely silent as to any possible nonlinear effects. Yet social theory offers sound reasons for why the immigration-crime association may be...

In rap on trial cases, prosecutors frequently introduce lyrics and videos as evidence of gang association, membership, or participation to help secure convictions and gang enhancements —a practice we call gang affiliation through rap misrepresentation. For the accused, the consequences of this practice can be severe: Gang enhancements can substanti...

California has fundamentally reformed its criminal justice system. Since 2011, the state passed several reforms which reduced its massive prison population. Importantly, this decaceration has not harmed public safety as research finds these measures had no impact on violent crime and only marginal impacts on property crime statewide. The COVID-19 p...

Social disorganization theory encourages researchers to consider “kinds of places” rather than “kinds of people” for understanding why some communities experience more crime than others. It posits that neighborhood structural conditions such as poverty and residential instability are related to crime largely indirectly through neighborhood processe...

Objectives There is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA. We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police. Methods We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 partici...

Compared to immigrant criminality, relatively less attention is paid to immigrant victimization, even as extensive scholarship on criminal victimization exists more generally. This is curious in light of research showing that certain immigrant groups are at increased risk of victimization with respect to certain crimes. In this essay, we set out to...

This chapter is the Conclusion, summarizing key points made throughout the Brief.

This chapter reviews findings from the growing literature at the macro and micro levels which reveals that, by and large, immigration and crime do not go hand and hand as commonly asserted. At the same time, we discuss studies that examine different types of crime to ascertain instances where immigrants may be over-represented as offenders or where...

This chapter introduces the reader to the data sources—and appropriate measures of key concepts—available for studying immigration and crime including census data, official crime data, and self-report surveys, among others. We also detail limitations of existing data sources for answering some of the most pressing questions.

This chapter reviews theories on the immigration–crime link, some macro-level, some micro-level, including those that pose a positive relationship between immigration and crime as well as those that pose a negative relationship between immigration and crime.

This chapter considers the role of immigration policies and practices, particularly those that reflect what scholars refer to as “crimmigration,” or the broader integration of civil immigration enforcement and the criminal justice system (Stumpf 2006). We pay special attention to recent policies and practices related to the devolution of immigratio...

This chapter, focuses specifically on undocumented immigration, reviewing the handful of recently published studies that examine whether undocumented immigrants are overrepresented in crime statistics and whether the presence of undocumented immigrants across places of varying sizes, from communities to states, leads to higher crime rates. This cha...

How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. But consensus is hard to come by, and there has long been a distinction between “policy talk” or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, and “pol...

We examine the impact of immigrant-serving organizations on neighborhood crime in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, while accounting for other community correlates of crime as well as potential endogeneity. We estimate longitudinal negative binomial regression models that test for the main, mediating, and moderating effects of immigrant-serving or...

Background How are economic downturns and suicide related? Objective This study examines the link between economically driven austerity measures implemented during a recent economic downturn—the Greek debt crisis—and suicide for the population as a whole, as well as for men and women separately. Methods Utilizing a 50‐nation panel containing annu...

Shaw and McKay advanced social disorganization theory in the 1930s, kick-starting a large body of research on communities and crime. Studies emphasize individual impacts of poverty, residential instability, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity by examining their independent effects on crime, adopting a variable-centered approach. We use a "neighborhood...

In 2017, California officially became a sanctuary state following the passage of Senate Bill 54, which limits state and local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Following the passage of SB54, critics worried that crime rates would rise. What impact did this policy have on crime in California? The current study, the first of it...

Objective: To estimate the causal effect of a medical marijuana initiative on suicide risk. In 1996, California legalized marijuana use for medical purposes. Implementation was abrupt and uniform, presenting a “natural experiment.” Method: Total, gun and non-gun suicides were aggregated by state for the years 1970-2004. California’s control time se...

In 2011 researchers published a paper that exposed a puzzling paradox: the happiest states in the U.S. also tend to have the highest suicide rates. In the current study, we re-examine this relationship by combining data from the Multiple Mortality Cause-of-Death Records, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and the American Communities S...

Objectives In criminal cases, prosecutors treat defendant-authored rap lyrics as an admission of guilt rather than as art or entertainment. Do negative stereotypes about rap music shape jurors’ attitudes about the defendant, unfairly influencing outcomes? Replicating and extending previous research (Fischoff Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29...

Objectives A growing body of research finds that immigration has a null or negative association with neighborhood crime rates. We build on this important literature by investigating the extent to which one theory, institutional completeness theory, may help explain lower crime rates in immigrant communities across the Southern California region. Sp...

Research Summary Our study represents the first effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47's (Prop 47's) impact on California's crime rates. With a state‐level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2015, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California's crime rates had Prop 47 not been enacted....

From the early twentieth century onward, research has found little to no support for a positive association between immigration and crime (Hayford 1911). In fact, much available research finds the opposite; more immigration leads to less crime. While the scholarly community has largely debunked as myth the idea that more immigrants lead to more cri...

This chapter examines the divergence between political rhetoric and public policy in the United States that demonizes immigrants for their "criminality" and the empirical reality of low crime rates in U.S. immigrant communities. Through a case study that examines a political debate on the propriety of using local police officers to help remove undo...

Objectives Examining the immigration-crime nexus across neighborhoods in the Southern California metropolitan region, this study builds on existing literature by unpacking immigration and accounting for the rich diversity that exists between immigrant groups. Methods Using data from a variety of sources, we capture this diversity with three differ...

A growing body of research documents that, contrary to public opinion, immigrants commit less crime than the native-born and that increased immigration to an area is either associated with lower crime rates or is not associated with crime at all. Scholars offer several theoretical explanations to account for such findings. In this chapter, we revie...

Recognition is growing that criminogenic neighborhood effects may not end at the borders of local communities , that neighborhoods are located relative to one another in ways that shape local crime rates. Inspired by this insight, this research explores the changing spatial distribution of race and income around a location and determines how such c...

Until recently, the state of California was home to the nation’s largest state prison system. After several decades of rapid growth, California’s prison population peaked at 173,000 in 2006, despite the fact that its prisons were designed to hold a maximum of 79,858 people. In 2011, the Supreme Court decided that prison conditions in California wer...

Why do some neighborhoods have higher crime rates than others? What is it about certain communities that consistently generate high crime rates? These are the central questions of interest for social disorganization theory, a macro-level perspective concerned with explaining the spatial distribution of crime across areas. Social disorganization the...

Social disorganization theory has emerged as the critical framework for understanding the relationship between community characteristics and crime in urban areas. This chapter describes social disorganization theory, laying out the theory's key principles and propositions. It then discusses one of the most serious and enduring challenges confrontin...

In the aftermath of one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, high unemployment has placed millions of Americans in precarious financial positions. More than ever Americans are opting out of traditional financial services, relying instead on “fringe lenders” such as check cashers, payday lenders, and pawnshops to manage their finances. Given the...

Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are some of the safest places around. Studies repeatedly find that neighborhood immigrant concentration is either negatively associated with crime and delinquency or not related to crime and delinquency at all. Less well understood, however, is why this is the...

In criminal proceedings across the U.S., rap music lyrics are being introduced as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. In this essay we draw attention to this disturbing practice, what we call “rap on trial,” and explore its context, describe its elements and contours, and consider its broader significance. We first offer historical context, demonstrat...

This is an amicus brief on rap music for an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case (submitted via the University of Florida’s Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project).

The connection between place and cultural expressions, such as music, is well established by scholars. This is particularly true for New Orleans where multiple forms of music like jazz and brass bands are thought to be both unique to the city and representative of social conditions there. While there have been a number of studies on the importance...

Scholars and public health officials alike have expressed significant concern over the dramatic growth in suicide among young Black males. Work in this area has focused primarily on the 1980s and early 1990s as key evidence of this concern. In the current study, we use a longer time series from 1982 to 2001 to examine exactly what these suicide tre...

In criminal proceedings across the U.S., rap music lyrics are being introduced as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. In this essay we draw attention to this disturbing practice, what we call “rap on trial,” and explore its context, describe its elements and contours, and consider its broader significance. We first offer historical context, demonstrat...

This is an amicus brief on rap music for an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case (submitted via the University of Florida’s Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project).The history and conventions of rap music, the heavily stigmatized artistic and often political genre of musical expression through which Petitioner Anthony Douglas Elonis conveyed much o...

Objectives: Previous research has neglected to consider whether trends in immigration are related to changes in the nature of homicide. This is important because there is considerable variability in the temporal trends of homicide subtypes disaggregated by circumstance. In the current study, we address this issue by investigating whether within-cit...

Using a measure to distinguish between five racial groups, this study examines the relationship between racial heterogeneity and crime within neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington at two points in time - 1980 and 1990 - and, more importantly, determines whether changes in levels of racial heterogeneity are associated with changes in the crime rate o...

This book deals with criminological theory, criminology, and criminal justice. It addresses a wide range of topics relevant to criminology, including socioeconomic factors that contribute to crime such as biology, community and inequality, emotions, immigration, social institutions, social learning, social support, parenting, peer networks, street...

This concluding chapter summarizes the major findings crosscutting the research presented in individual chapters, identifies key research themes for future studies, and initiates a conversation on how social science research can better inform immigration policy. By drawing on studies from multiple disciplines and from various sites within the Unite...

Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are some of the safest places around. Studies repeatedly find that immigrant concentration is either negatively associated with neighborhood crime rates or not related to crime at all. But are immigrant neighborhoods always safer places? How does the larger co...

Arizona's controversial new immigration bill is just the latest of many steps in the new criminalization of immigrants. While many cite the presumed criminality of illegal aliens as an excuse for ever-harsher immigration policies, it has in fact been well-established that immigrants commit less crime, and in particular less violent crime, than the...

Payday lenders have become the banker of choice for many residents of poor and working class neighborhoods in recent years, often trapping the most vulnerable residents in a cycle of debt. The substantial costs that customers of these fringe bankers incur have long been documented and have been the subject of much policy debate as part of the contr...

Payday lenders have become the banker of choice for many residents of poor and working-class neighborhoods in recent years, often trapping the most vulnerable residents in a cycle of debt. The substantial costs that customers of these fringe bankers incur have long been documented and have been the subject of much policy debate as part of the contr...

The community or neighborhood in which juvenile lives constitute an important context and it influences juvenile delinquency. This article describes the role of communities in the production of delinquency. It begins by identifying community characteristics of importance and describes why researchers have most frequently been examining these. Follo...

Purpose – We review the literature on the general effects of rap music and discuss in detail those studies that purport to examine how it affects attitudes and behavior related to violence and misogyny.Methodology – Critical review of the popular and scholarly rap music literature.Findings – We describe four critical weaknesses in this literature t...

In recent years, criminologists, as well as journalists, have devoted considerable attention to the potential deterrent effect of what is sometimes referred to as “proactive” policing. This policing style entails the vigorous enforcement of laws against relatively minor offenses to prevent more serious crime. The current study examines the effect o...

Objectives. What are the correlates of suicide among blacks and whites? One body of literature suggests that structural factors such as poverty, inequality, joblessness, and family disruption are the key contributors, while another literature considers the availability of firearms to be the central factor. No studies have thoroughly explored both p...

Rap music has a reputation for being misogynistic, but surprisingly little research has systematically investigated this dimension of the music. This study assesses the portrayal of women in a representative sample of 403 rap songs. Content analysis identified five gender-related themes in this body of music—themes that contain messages regarding ‘...

Despite popular assumptions, criminologists have long recognized that crime rates are lower for various immigrant groups than for similarly disadvantaged African Americans. What accounts for this paradox? In this study, we consider the role of neighborhood context, specifically, the concentration of immigrants within a community, as a protective fa...

A popular perception is that immigration causes higher crime rates. Yet, historical and contemporary research finds that at the individual level, immigrants are not more inclined to commit crime than the native born. Knowledge of the macro-level relationship between immigration and crime, however, is characterized by important gaps. Most notably, d...

One of the most recognized facts about crime is that it is not randomly distributed across neighborhoods within a city. That is, crime does not occur equally in all areas; rather, it tends to cluster in certain locales but not others. It is for this reason that residents can often identify where the “good” and “bad” areas of a city are. Social diso...

Purpose – Despite the commonly held stereotype that immigration and crime go hand in hand, there are but a few studies that examine the relationship between immigration and crime across macro-social units, including neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Even fewer focus on homicide, particularly homicide disaggregated by...

The current study examines spatial dependence in robbery rates for a sample of 1,056 cities with 25,000 or more residents over the 2000–2003 period. Although commonly considered in some macro-level research, spatial processes have not been examined in relation to city-level variation in robbery. The results of our regression analyses suggest that c...

Book Reviews 857 juvenile detention personnel in working with lesbian, bisexual, transgen-der, and queer girls. Schaffner shares her horror as she listens to the young girls attempting to justify and explain their actions, for the girls do commit truly horrific crimes against others. Anyone who reads this book, because it is so well-written and bec...

I argue the need for conceptual clarity with respect to disorder.

Does ethnic heterogeneity in neighbourhoods create co-operative or conflict-oriented relationships among residents? Social theorists have long noted both the positive and negative aspects of heterogeneity, but the limited research on large samples of neighbourhoods documents ambiguous or weak effects. In this survey-based study of Seattle, it is fo...

This study examines the structural correlates of Hispanic suicide at the metropolitan level using Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death Re- cords and 2000 census data. The authors test competing hypotheses regarding the effects of immigration, assimilation, affluence, eco- nomic disadvantage, and ethnic inequality on suicide levels for His- panics as a...

In this study we explore the impact of neighborhoods on criminals and of criminals on neighborhoods with respect to a current pressing problem — prisoner reentry. First, we review the key issues surrounding prisoner reentry in a “get tough on crime” era and describe the multiple challenges ex-offenders face upon release. We pay particular attention...

This study examines the representation of crime stories in the news. Using 71 matched pairs, we examine the constructed elements in the reporting of crime stories between newspapers and local television to document similarities and differences across the mediums. Although considerable work has been devoted to discerning differences in reporting acr...

This article analyzes whether neighborhood context or environment in Seattle influences dimensions of social ties among neighbors, independent of the individual attributes of residents such as home ownership and socio-economic status. Three dimensions of neighbor ties are examined: interaction, organizing collectively, and knowing about neighbors....

Wilson's deindustrialization thesis has been the focus of much recent research. This study is the first to empirically test his thesis as it relates to suicide among young black males, which has increased dramatically over the past two decades. Using 1998–2001 Mortality multiple Cause-of-Death Records and 2000 census data, we examine the influence...

Prior studies of recidivism have focused almost exclusively on individual-level characteristics of offenders and their offenses to explore the correlates of reoffending. Notably absent from these studies are measures reflecting the neighborhood contexts in which individuals live. The current research addresses this shortcoming. Using data on a samp...

Rap is one of the most salient music genres of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Gangsta rap, in particular, with its focus on urban street life, has become a dominant means of expression within contemporary African American adolescent culture. As such, it speaks directly to issues of identity, culture, violence, and nihilism—the...

This chapter describes how probation officers explain and assess the future risk of offending. Probation officers use qualitatively different kinds of attributions and explanations and rely on explanations about the immediate causes of the present offense. The analysis in the chapter presents three striking results. First, in the assessments of low...

Recent research on identity, culture, and violence in inner-city communities describes a black youth culture, or street code, that influences adolescent behavior, particularly violent behavior. I build upon such literature through analysis of gangsta rap music, exploring how the street code is present not only in “the street,” but also in rap music...