EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — Researchers with the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) recently completed a crime and immigration study regarding the U.S.-Mexico border region.
El Paso County partnered with UTEP researchers through a National Institute of Justice grant to conduct the study, which began in 2019.
The study aimed to explore the relationship between immigration status and criminogenic risk factors among inmates at the El Paso County jail, researchers said.
The data is broken down between two studies.
The first study looked at 5,175 inmates at the County Jail, and compared to the U.S.-born citizens, “documented immigrants had less extensive criminal histories and were less likely to have current drug charges. However, they had higher rates of current DWI/DUI charges,” researchers said.
“The main misconception is that immigrants are more involved in crime than native-born U.S. citizens in terms of crime rates. Studies done here in El Paso and elsewhere in the United States consistently show that immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born U.S. citizens,” Dr. Theodore R. Curry, associate professor of criminal justice and security studies at UTEP, said.
The second study involved interviews with 273 inmates booked in the jail. Researchers measured eight criminogenic risk factors, known as the “Central Eight”:
- Pattern of criminal behavior
- Antisocial personality pattern
- Antisocial peers
- Pro-criminal cognitions
- Substance abuse
- Family and marital problems
- Employment and education problems
- Lack of prosocial leisure activities
Researchers found that migrants had lower risk scores on 7 of 8 factors compared to U.S.-born citizens.
“The only area where we found that undocumented immigrants had higher areas of risk was in the domain of education and employment. And that makes sense, because a lot of times that’s a motivating factor when people are immigrating,” Dr. Jennifer Eno Louden, psychology professor at UTEP, said.
The findings of the studies were presented to El Paso County commissioners during a special session meeting on Thursday, April 17. Officials are working on making the findings public.
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