Over the past few decades, extensive empirical evidence has supported the immigrant revitalization thesis, demonstrating that immigration is often associated with reductions in community crime. However, debate over the relationship between immigration and crime has increasingly grown in public and political discourse with many politicians claiming immigration fuels gang violence. Yet remarkably little research has examined immigration effects on serious gang violence, despite pervasive rhetoric suggesting that immigration adds to gang crime. The current study addresses this gap in the research by examining the association between immigration, fatal, and nonfatal gang shootings across 77 Chicago community areas during the 2010-2021 period, using fixed effects negative binomial models. Findings suggest immigration is unrelated to increasing gang violence in Chicago neighborhoods but serves as a strong protective force against these forms of serious violence when they are unrelated to gang activity. Together, these findings challenge contemporary claims that immigration contributes to serious gang violence and reinforces the importance of distinguishing gang and non-gang violence when evaluating the crime consequences of immigration.

There is a divide between political rhetoric and academic research on the topic of immigration and crime. Political rhetoric often claims that immigrants are dangerous and deportation is necessary to decrease crime. In contrast, empirical research demonstrates lower criminality among immigrants and little effect of deportation on crime. In light of these competing narratives, it is unclear where public perception stands on this issue. Some recent research has demonstrated that more American’s may be buying into political claims that immigration increases crime, however, recent research has not explored why the public has grown to accept these claims, and what factors drive these beliefs. To address these gaps, this study investigates the factors that are associated with endorsement of the four core pillars of contemporary political rhetoric concerning immigration’s effects on (1) crime, (2) gangs, (3) drugs, and (4) the need for immigration enforcement. Using a nationally benchmarked sample ( n = 1139) from Lucid Theorem collected in May–June 2025, the analysis assesses multiple theorized predictors of support for these narratives about immigration, including support for Trump, White nationalist sentiment, and Latino punitiveness, alongside other relevant correlates. The findings suggest Latino punitiveness is the strongest and most consistent predictor of these beliefs.

Research increasingly shows immigration has neutral or protective effects on community homicide and violence. However, less is known about whether these patterns extend to fatal gun violence. Immigration may uniquely influence such homicides as immigrants often settle in disadvantaged areas with high rates of gun violence, and Hispanic immigrants are frequently linked to gangs in public discourse, which disproportionately contribute to firearm homicides. To address this gap, this study examines nationwide county-level data from the Center for Disease Control mortality reports and the American Community Survey (2000-2015) using negative binomial and fixed-effects models. Findings indicate immigration, including Hispanic immigration, largely protects against firearm homicide with a few exceptions in fixed effects models, which supports the immigrant revitalization thesis and suggests insulating effects of immigration on lethal gun violence.

Ongoing efforts to ensure fairness and uniformity in sentencing have yet to eliminate the influence of defendant personal characteristics. While existing sentencing research predominantly focuses on race/ethnicity, sex, and age, this study shifts attention to the role of education, a socio-economic factor often understudied and undertheorized. Drawing on the focal concerns perspective, we aim to examine whether higher education signals redeemability and lower risk in some contexts but greater blameworthiness in others. Using data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC)’s Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences (MFCS) data series (2018–2020), we estimate incarceration and sentence length models across all offenses combined and separately for financial, drug, and immigration offenses. We also assess whether the observed education effects vary by defendant sex and race/ethnicity. Findings indicate that, although education is associated with modest differences in sentencing outcomes overall, the direction and magnitude of its effect varies across offense type, sex, and race/ethnicity. Among these patterns of heterogeneity, financial offenses emerge as the context where higher education is associated with more severe sentencing outcomes. All told, more closely examining socio-economic factors like education in future research is essential for a comprehensive understanding of, and approach to, reducing unwarranted disparities in sentencing.

In 2021, the FBI sought to retire the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Summary Reporting System (SRS) and fully transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). However, it is unclear how this transition to a “NIBRS-only” system might impact statistics on race/ethnicity and crime in the United States. To date, research offers few comparisons of race/ethnicity and crime patterns in NIBRS versus traditional UCR reporting systems. In addition, studies that provide these comparisons were conducted years ago (1) before the full transition to NIBRS when the program had limited coverage (less than 30% U.S. population coverage) and (2) before the rapid growth in U.S. minority groups and especially Hispanic populations seen throughout the twenty-first century. The current study addresses this gap in research by comparing racial/ethnic portraits of crime (cross-sectionally and over time) across four of the FBI's “public facing” official crime data systems—(1) Crime in the United States (CIUS) reports, (2) NIBRS Offender data, (3) NIBRS Arrestee data, and (4) NIBRS Arrestee National Estimates. Findings suggest that Black offending and arrest patterns are generally consistent across data sources, but depictions of Hispanic crime involvement differ sharply depending on which data source is used.

Collective efficacy is a prominent theoretical framework guiding community and crime research. Cross-sectional analyses provide consistent support. However, collective efficacy is a theory of dynamic processes that warrants longitudinal assessment. The current study addresses this research gap by assessing the impact of collective efficacy on community rates of household robbery, child victimization, and delinquency over time (2000 to 2008), using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS). Results show that collective efficacy is associated with lower rates of robbery but not child victimization or delinquency. Findings suggest that collective efficacy is most likely to impact crimes that occur in public settings and that its effects might vary across different types of community crimes.

Political rhetoric on immigration has increasingly framed it as a threat to public safety—fueling aggressive immigration enforcement strategies, including the expanded use of federal agents, mass deportations, and strict border controls. In particular, the immigration-crime narrative has been built on four key themes or “pillars,” which suggest that immigration (1) increases crime, (2) fuels gang violence, (3) is responsible for drug problems, and (4) requires mass deportation and strict border control policies to combat these issues and reduce crime. Using data from a 2025 Lucid survey and a review of existing literature, this article provides a clear and focused summary describing the extent to which these four claims of the immigration-crime narrative are supported by (1) public opinion and (2) findings from scientific research. As we highlight in the following sections, all four of these “pillars” of the immigration-crime narrative are in fact myths with no consistent empirical support.

Purpose: Researchers have offered several reasons for the mixed minority threat-sentencing literature including diverse dependent variables, heterogenous threat conceptualizations, and incongruent threat measurements. An overlooked potential explanation, however, is the heavy reliance on cross-sectional snapshots. If minority threat effects vary over time, then past works showing differing results may not "contradict," but rather reflect substantive temporal shifts in minority threat effects. Against this backdrop, the current study "zooms out" and considers the evidence for minority threat theory in sentencing throughout the 21st century. Methods: Using data spanning nearly 20 years, we examine the effects of minority population size (static threat) and change (dynamic threat) on federal sentence length outcomes at multiple time points - both overall and specifically for minority defendants. In doing so, we produce 40 tests of minority threat theory ranging from 2000 to 2018. Results: Findings indicate that support for minority threat theory in sentencing is meager, but conclusions about the theory's predictive validity often depend on the time point, racial/ethnic group, and threat measurement examined. Conclusions: Results suggest that inquiries into whether support for minority threat exists may be too simplistic. Instead, researchers may be better off asking "when does support for minority threat theory exist?"

Research examining how federal courts have responded to the 21st century overdose crisis is limited, and even less is known about how district exposure to overdoses has shaped federal drug sentences. The current study examines how drug sentence lengths are contextualized by district-level overdose death rates across both substance type and race/ethnicity using federal sentencing data, Centers for Disease Control overdose mortality data, and other data on district social and legal characteristics for the 2015-2020 period. Findings reveal that district overdose death rates (especially involving minorities) are associated with slightly shorter drug sentences, net of other factors. In addition, Black-White and Hispanic-White sentence length gaps in drug cases declined in districts with more overdose deaths in part due to higher White sentence lengths, but mostly because minority sentences became shorter as district overdose mortality rates increased. These results suggest that exposure to the overdose crisis has not resulted in greater punitiveness in drug sentence lengths, and if anything, has been tied to leniency especially for minorities. Implications of these results for research on the 21st century overdose crisis, federal court responses to this crisis (especially across race/ethnicity), and for contextual effects in sentencing are discussed.

Background: This study explores how arrests changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic across race. Daily life changed for everyone across the country with the onset of the pandemic, and early works have shown that crime changed in this period. Method: Official arrest data were pulled from the Indiana State Police database for several violent and property crimes covering 26 counties. Data were gathered from 2017 to 2021 for a comparison of pre-COVID-19 versus after the onset of COVID-19 (2020–2021). An OLS regression was run to assess differences in these patterns of arrests across Black and White populations. Results: This analysis finds that Black homicide, White homicide, and total Black violent crime arrests were significantly related to COVID-19 measures after controlling for other variables. The COVID-19 measures indicate that these crimes saw an increase in arrest after the onset of the pandemic and that these effects may not have been identical across race. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic was linked to crime across race in the state of Indiana. Moving forward, it is important to uncover how crime changed across race in other locales and exactly what mechanisms may have driven these changes.

PurposeDespite over 1 million American lives lost to drug overdoses throughout the 21st century and a turbulent history between federal courts and drugs, past research has provided little insight on how criminal courts are responding to modern drug challenges. This research assesses the federal criminal legal response to 21st century drug problems in the context of substantial assistance departures.MethodsUsing federal drug sentencing data from 2008 to 2020, this study uses a series of multivariate regression models to examine the prevalence and magnitude of substantial assistance departures in 21st century drug cases.ResultsResults indicate that pharmaceutical opioid cases have been the primary beneficiaries of substantial assistance motions, while methamphetamine and (to a lesser extent) fentanyl cases have not attracted substantial assistance departures to the same degree.ConclusionsThe response to these 21st century drug challenges is not only reflected in rule-based differences in policy, but also in “additional” benefits (for pharmaceutical opioids) and costs (for methamphetamine and fentanyl). Given the appetite for information surrounding government responses to the twindemic, this study provides a nuanced analysis and contributes to knowledge about formal responses to modern drug problems.

Since 2000, sentencing scholars have commonly controlled for racial/ethnic differences in underlying criminal conduct using presumptive sentence. In recent years, the presumptive sentence approach has been critiqued for (amongst other things) filtering out racial/ethnic disparities that accumulate pre-sentencing. To circumvent this concern, a small but growing body of literature has begun to employ the base offense level approach. The goal of this study is to analyze the implications of using the presumptive sentence versus base offense level approach to isolate racial/ethnic effects on federal sentencing outcomes. Using data from the United States Sentencing Commission (2018–2020), this analysis tracks racial/ethnic differences throughout the pre-sentence process (base offense level to final offense level). Subsequently, we compare racial/ethnic effects obtained in a series of multi-level multivariate regression models using both the presumptive sentence and base offense level approaches. Findings indicate that the two approaches provide vastly different starting points for racial/ethnic differences in underlying criminal conduct and, therefore, different conclusions about how race/ethnicity matters in sentencing. Most notably, Hispanic defendants are advantaged relative to Whites when accounting for racial/ethnic differences in base offense level but disadvantaged relative to Whites when accounting for racial/ethnic differences in presumptive sentence. Findings suggest that the presumptive sentence approach filters out important racial/ethnic differences in the pre-sentence process and that the two modeling approaches are not interchangeable. Results clearly indicate that modeling matters in sentencing research, and future research should pay close attention to their baselines for between-group differences in relevant conduct.

Over the last several decades, federal courts have devoted considerable effort towards improving fairness in sentencing. Despite these efforts, research has consistently shown that racial/ethnic minority defendants receive harsher sentences than similarly situated White defendants. While a large body of research has detected these racial/ethnic disparities, relatively few studies have examined how they have changed over time in light of the different legal, societal, and priority changes in federal criminal courts (and the United States more broadly). Using 22 years of federal sentencing data, the current study assesses trends in Black-White and Hispanic-White sentencing disparities (net of factors relevant to sentencing). Results suggest that trends in racial/ethnic sentencing disparities differ by the dependent variable examined. At incarceration, Black and Hispanic disadvantages have been largely time stable. However, racial/ethnic effects on sentence length have changed over time, diminishing in early years before re-aggravating in later years. Findings suggest that the movement towards racial/ethnic equity in sentencing has been slower than many might hope, with setbacks along the way. The re-emergence of racial/ethnic disadvantages indicates the need for a renewed focus towards reducing racial/ethnic disparities and creating greater egalitarianism in sentencing.

Growing political and public rhetoric claim that immigration has contributed to drug crime and the overdose crisis of the 21st century. However, research to date has given little attention to immigration–overdose relationships, and almost no work has examined the ways that the sanctuary status of locales influences these connections. The current study draws on the immigrant revitalization perspective and Brayne’s (2014) systems avoidance theory to examine the connections between immigrant concentration, sanctuary status, and overdose mortality across MSAs for the 2015 period, overall and across races/ethnicities. The analysis uses data on overdose deaths drawn from the CDC’s Restricted Access Multiple Cause of Death Mortality files, combined with data on characteristics of MSAs drawn from the U.S. Census and other macro-level data sources. Findings reveal that the percent Latinx foreign-born is related to lower levels of overdose deaths overall and for White and Black populations but higher levels of Latinx overdose mortality. Contrary to expectations, sanctuary status has little effect on overdose deaths across most groups, and it does not significantly condition immigration–overdose relationships.

The opioid crisis has claimed more than a half-million deaths over the past two decades and is one of the leading causes of injury deaths in the United States. The current study examines: 1) public opinion on the severity of the opioid crisis in terms of lives lost compared to other fatal social events, 2) opinions on who has been most affected by the opioid crisis, and the accuracy of these perceptions, 3) opinions on who is responsible or "to blame" for the crisis and who should fix it and 4) the individual and contextual characteristics that are related to these perceptions. Using data from an October 2019 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) survey, the Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Census, we find that the public severely underestimates the death toll of the opioid crisis compared to other fatal events. We also find that public perception of who and where have been most affected is fairly accurate, and such views are highly consistent across different locations, contexts, and sociodemographic characteristics of places and respondents. Additionally, we find that the public collectively views pharmaceutical companies and doctors as responsible for contributing to and fixing the opioid overdose crisis.

A growing body of research has begun to identify the social and ecological predictors of community overdose rates. However, questions remain about these relationships, and it is unclear whether the predictors of community overdose concentrations mirror those of other fatal social problems, such as homicide and suicide. Drawing on three leading ecological theories of overdose concentrations, the present study provides a longitudinal macro-level analysis of the community "determinants of death" for overdose (overall and by substance type), homicide, and suicide. Specifically, the authors use Centers for Disease Control and Prevention restricted-access mortality data, combined with measures of community social, economic, legal, and health indicators for the period from 2000 to 2015. Findings from time-series models reveal that county concentrations of overdose are linked to multiple theoretically driven factors-including opioid prescription rates, population decline, county health problems, and manufacturing employment-with several key similarities in the determinants of death across overdose, homicide, and suicide.

Public and political discourse has routinely suggested that immigration is linked to higher community levels of violence and drug problems. In contrast to these claims, research has consistently shown that immigration is not associated with greater violence at the macro level. However, few studies have examined the links between immigration flows and community drug problems. The current study seeks to address this gap in research by providing a county-level longitudinal analysis of immigration and drug overdose deaths both overall and by substance type for the 2000 to 2015 period and provides an analysis of homicide for comparison with prior immigration-crime research. In addition, this analysis compares immigration-overdose relationships across immigrant destination types. The current project relies on overdose and homicide data drawn from the Centers for Disease Control's Restricted Access Multiple Cause of Death Mortality files combined with data on county social, economic, health, and legal contexts drawn from multiple macro-level data sources. Findings reveal that immigration is not associated with higher levels of overdose or homicide deaths, and when effects are significant, immigration is linked to lower levels of overdose mortality across multiple substances and destination types.

Objectives: This study seeks to understand how national origin and legal migration status of noncitizen defendants in federal criminal courts shape incarceration and sentence length decisions. Method: The authors use annual United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences (MFCS) datasets (2011–2016) to examine the impact of defendant’s (1) national origin and (2) legal versus illegal migration status on incarceration and sentence length decisions in federal criminal courts. In addition, in order to account for effects of immigration cases, supplemental analyses are conducted for (1) non-immigration offenses and (2) immigration-only offenses. Results: For the incarceration decision, noncitizen defendants have higher odds of incarceration than U.S. citizens, net of other factors. These effects are less consistent in the sentence length decision. These relationships systemically differ across national origin and legal migration status. Conclusions: Punishment disadvantages based on one’s citizenship are particularly pronounced for defendants from Mexico, Latin America, and Africa and especially for those with “illegal” migration status. As noncitizen populations continue to grow in federal courts and in the U.S. more broadly, understanding and addressing these citizenship disparities in punishment will be increasingly important.

This study examined whether and how discretionary sentencing add-ons (i.e., secondary charges, victim injury points, firearms/weapons points, drug trafficking enhancements) contribute to disparities. We examined add-ons that increase sentencing points and so contribute to a defendant "scoring to prison." We analyzed: (1) the degree to which add-ons explain racial and ethnic disparities in imprisonment (mediation); and (2) whether add-ons are more adverse for minority defendants (moderation). We did not find that add-ons "explain" racial differences in the use of prison sentences. We did find, however, that some add-ons, particularly those that signal "dangerousness," are racially/ethnically disparate in their consequences. The findings raise questions about the role of court discretion in perpetuating racial and ethnic disparities.

Structural disadvantage has long been empirically linked to violent crime across different race/ethnic groups. More recently conceptualized as "racial invariance," observed racial differences in crime rates are hypothesized to be the result of disparities in community-level structural conditions. However, most investigations into this hypothesis have focused on urban settings, with limited attention to rural contexts. The current study seeks to fill this gap by comparing county-level structural predictors of homicide victimization for Black, White, and Latinx populations in both urban and rural communities. Consistent with the racial invariance hypothesis, findings reveal that disadvantage strongly predicts homicide across race/ethnicity in both rural and urban counties. Closer inspection of results, however, exposes noteworthy differences in the effects in rural and urban settings.