Legal Status of Immigrants and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
58 Pages Posted: 17 Nov 2011
Date Written: June 17, 2011
Abstract
We estimate the causal effect of immigrants' legal status on criminal behavior exploiting exogenous variation in migration restrictions across nationalities driven by the last round of the European Union enlargement. Unique individual-level data on a collective clemency bill enacted in Italy five months before the enlargement allow us to compare the post-release criminal record of inmates from new EU member countries with a control group of pardoned inmates from candidate EU member countries. Difference-in-differences in the probability of re-arrest between the two groups before and after the enlargement show that obtaining legal status lowers the recidivism of economically motivated offenders, but only in areas that provide relatively better labor market opportunities to legal immigrants. We provide a search-theoretic model of criminal behavior that is consistent with these results.
Keywords: immigration, crime, legal status
JEL Classification: F22, K42, C41
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
By Milo Bianchi, Paolo Buonanno, ...
-
Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves
By Brian Bell, Stephen J. Machin, ...
-
Should the U.S. Have Locked the Heaven's Door? Reassessing the Benefits of the Postwar Immigration
By Xavier Chojnicki, Frédéric Docquier, ...
-
By Francesco Drago and Roberto Galbiati
-
Effects of Immigrant Legalization on Crime: The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act
-
Empirical Characteristics of Legal and Illegal Immigrants in the U.S
By Vincenzo Caponi and Miana Plesca