Abstract
Mistrust between immigrants and the police may undermine law enforcement's ability to keep communities safe. This paper documents that immigration policies affect an individual's willingness to report crime. I analyze the 2015 Priority Enforcement Program, which focused immigration enforcement on individuals convicted of serious crimes and shifted resources away from immigration-related offenses. I use data from the Dallas Police Department that include a complainant's ethnicity to show that the number of violent and property crimes reported to the police by Hispanics increased by 4 percent after the introduction of PEP. These results suggest that reducing enforcement of individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety can potentially improve trust between immigrant communities and the police.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 103395 |
| Journal | Journal of Urban Economics |
| Volume | 128 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2022 |
Funding
I am grateful to Leah Boustan and Ilyana Kuziemko for considerable guidance on this project. I also thank various anonymous referees and David Neumark for their very useful feedback. Jessica Brown, Jiwon Choi, Matt Cocci, Will Dobbie, Ben Eskin, Hank Farber, Felipe Goncalves, Stephanie Kestelman, David Lee, Ale Marchetti-Bowick, Alex Mas, Steve Mello, Whitney Rosenbaum, Owen Zidar, and participants of the Princeton Industrial Relations Section Labor Lunch, Public Finance Working Group, and the Fellowship of SPIA Scholars also provided comments that greatly improved the work. Thank you also to Nicole Jackson and Lieutenant Phyllis Nobles for providing me access to Dallas Police Department data; Sue Long for help accessing data on ICE detainer requests; Chris Moriarty for a primer on ICE and PEP; Krsna Avila and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center for sharing information about whether particular jurisdictions complied with PEP as well as about meetings between ICE officers and local officials; and Soila Monroy, Sergeant Robert Munoz, and Gloria Renteria for taking the time to talk to me about police-community relations in Dallas. This research was conducted during my time as a fellow of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. Finally, thank you to Princeton University for generous financial support. All errors are my own. I am grateful to Leah Boustan and Ilyana Kuziemko for considerable guidance on this project. I also thank various anonymous referees and David Neumark for their very useful feedback. Jessica Brown, Jiwon Choi, Matt Cocci, Will Dobbie, Ben Eskin, Hank Farber, Felipe Goncalves, Stephanie Kestelman, David Lee, Ale Marchetti-Bowick, Alex Mas, Steve Mello, Whitney Rosenbaum, Owen Zidar, and participants of the Princeton Industrial Relations Section Labor Lunch, Public Finance Working Group, and the Fellowship of SPIA Scholars also provided comments that greatly improved the work. Thank you also to Nicole Jackson and Lieutenant Phyllis Nobles for providing me access to Dallas Police Department data; Sue Long for help accessing data on ICE detainer requests; Chris Moriarty for a primer on ICE and PEP; Krsna Avila and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center for sharing information about whether particular jurisdictions complied with PEP as well as about meetings between ICE officers and local officials; and Soila Monroy, Sergeant Robert Munoz, and Gloria Renteria for taking the time to talk to me about police-community relations in Dallas. This research was conducted during my time as a fellow of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. Finally, thank you to Princeton University for generous financial support. All errors are my own.
Keywords
- Crime reporting
- Immigration
- Immigration policy
- Police effectiveness
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics and Econometrics
- Urban Studies
