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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33924 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Very well. That stat appears to come from the paper LAW-ABIDING IMMIGRANTS: THE INCARCERATION GAP BETWEEN IMMIGRANTS AND THE US-BORN, 1870–2020. On page 24 of the PDF, the chart appears to show an incarceration rate of 1,200 per 100k first generation immigrants in 2020, versus 2,600 per 100k native born. (How the hell do you escape a tilde on this site?) The breakdown shows an incarceration rate of perhaps ~1,900 per 100k first generation Mexican and Central Americans (this would presumably be the closest category for Haitians).

According to this page, Springfield hasn't been very safe lately:

The 2022 crime rate in Springfield, OH is 573 (City-Data.com crime index), which is 2.3 times greater than the U.S. average. It was higher than in 97.9% U.S. cities.

Looking at the crime type breakdowns, assaults have gone way up since 2020, while rapes perhaps did a reversion to the mean. Other crimes don't appear to have meaningfully increased in volume.

Meanwhile, the demographics put it at 77% white and 1% Latino as of the 2020 population of 65k. Obviously, the demographics have changed quite a bit since then, with 15,000 Haitians settling there since 2020.

Overall, I don't know if we have enough data to do a proper apples-to-apples comparison. One specific type of crime rose from 2020 to 2022, but we don't know when most Haitians came in from 2020 - 2024, nor do we know the breakdown of those crimes by ethnicity over the years (it appears the town has had an economic downturn, so how would we know the crimes are because of the Haitians and not because of disgruntled native workers with nothing better to do?).

In any case:

High crime parts of the US drag the average up, and while it's technically true immigrants have a lower-than-average crime rate, that's small consolation for communities that aren't in that dragging-the-average-upwards cluster.

I don't see how this invalidates the statistic. Are immigrants settling disproportionately in formerly peaceful areas that now have more crime than before? That would seem surprising to me, given that I mostly see immigrants in the metropolitan cities rather than in the rural countryside, and big cities have much higher crime rates. But by all means, if you have evidence that shows that the statistic is misleading, please do show it.

Overall, I don't know if we have enough data to do a proper apples-to-apples comparison.

Well, to make it slightly more apples-to-apples, since the your link provides the incarceration rate, I did a quick search for Clark Country. Funnily enough, like you said, it's not the safest place, and it's actually one of those that drags the national average up. Still, comparing it to your link, it seems roughly on the same level as "all immigrants". If you take South and Central America, it's not even close, sending in more people from that region would increase the incarceration rate even more.

Looking at those charts, I have the feeling they're being misused. It seems they were set up to say something like " America's racist society is turning otherwise law-abiding people into criminals", but through some game of telephone people started retelling it as "immigrants are literally less criminal than average Americans", which is completely wrong.

I don't see how this invalidates the statistic.

What do you mean? He literally said "Of course, history shows that at least w/ the first generation of immigrants, crime is likely to go down". How do you parse that data to come to that conclusion? Even if we go with "there's no data for a good apples-to-apples comparison, he's the one that's wrong for making the claim!

Am I missing something here?

Edit: There's something very weird going on in that source. Apparently the average incarceration rate in the US is 531 per 100K, I don't know how you get these numbers to work together with the study you linked. Do they per 100K of the prison population??

Maybe it's because of the age? My link gives the rate for 15-64s, while yours for 18-40's. God, I hate academia.

I took his claim to mean that overall crime rates as measured across the US would be lower than it’d be without immigrants. I’m not even parsing the data, I’m just not seeing how your claim — even if true, which it may well be — invalidates his claim.

I took his claim to mean that the Haitian immigrants coming to Springfield would lower the crime rate in Springfield. My enture point is it uses national rates, and cannot be used when debating local crime, so I don't see how his claim can be valid.

And seriously, how do you read this:

I mean, one should be able to look at the crime rate of Springfield, Ohio over the next few years and see if things shift that much. Of course, history shows that at least w/ the first generation of immigrants, crime is likely to go down.

As "across the US"??

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