Immigration and Self-Reported Delinquency: The Interplay of Immigration Generations, Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

• NCJ Number: 212781
• Journal: Journal of Crime and Justice Volume: 28 Issue: 2 Dated: 2005 Pages: 71-99
• Author(s): Hoan N. Bui; Ornuma Thongniramol
• Date Published: 2005
• Length: 29 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined self-reported delinquency among youths of different immigration generations in search of understanding the relationship between immigration status and delinquency.

Abstract

Over the years, the United States has received increasing numbers of immigrants. The number of immigrants admitted to the United States in the year 2000, reached nearly a million. Consequently, there have been concerns, as well as a lack of understanding about the connection between immigration and crime. In addition, past research has failed to consider immigration generations, race, ethnicity, gender and offense types in searching for a potential link between immigration and crime. This may conceal important differences in criminal/delinquent behavior between members of different immigration generations and social groups. This study examined self-reported delinquency among youths of different immigration status and from different racial and ethnic backgrounds in an attempt to determine if there were differences in delinquency between youths of different immigration generations. The immigration-delinquency relationship was consistent across different types of delinquency and if the immigration-delinquency relationship was consistent across gender, racial, and ethnic subgroups. Data were collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the study sample consisted of 18,097 students from different immigration generations. The study findings indicated that the prevalence of self-reported delinquency and the effect of immigration status on delinquency were not equally distributed across immigration generations for different racial, ethnic, and gender subgroups. Overall, the prevalence and the odds of self-reported delinquency tended to be higher for the second and third-plus generations, but there were racial, ethnic, and gender variations for different types of delinquency. Tables, references