Immigration and Crime in Catalonia, Spain: What’s the Connection? Towards a Theory on Immigrant Crime

Introduction The crime rate in Spain has increased substantially in the last 20 years. In 2008, according to the National Institute of Statistics, the crime rate increased by 17.1% from the previous year (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica [INE], 2008). Simultaneously Spain has changed from a country of heavy emigration to an attractive country for economic migrants. Since 2000, there has been a 24% increase in the number of legally registered immigrants residing in Spain (Cornelius, 2004). Spaniards have made a connection between these parallel phenomena , believing that one variable has caused the other. In a recent opinion poll conducted in 2007 by a non-profit organization, SOS Racismo, 60% of Spaniards reported that they believed immigrants to be the cause in the recent increase in crime (SOS Racismo, 2007). While it is easy to simply regard these fears as xenophobia creeping into a society afraid of change, according to Calavita (2005), a pro-immigrant researcher, they are in fact valid fears. Calavita found that in 2001 the proportion of the prison population born abroad in Spain was twenty five times higher than the proportion of immigrants in the population and she says their numbers continue to grow each year (2005). While she says that discrimination could play a role, Spanish citizens have not. The negative perception of immigrants as criminals predominates in their minds and it appears to be here to stay. In the study to follow, using the case of Catalonia, I will examine the level of immigration and crime rates between 2003 and 2007 to see if in fact there is a relationship between crime and immigration, and if so why? And if my hypothesis is incorrect, then what is it that causes immigrants to commit crime and at a rate higher than native Spaniards? Using both a criminological and sociological based framework to analyze this situation, I hypothesize that when demographic variables are controlled for there is only a weak correlation between immigration and crime. The majority of individuals who choose to immigrate to Spain and Catalonia specifically are single men between the ages of 18 and 35 and it is precisely this population that criminologists such as Wilson and Sampson (2005) claim have the highest incidence of criminal delinquency. Therefore I hypothesize that it is these demographic characteristics of immigrant populations and not specifically the status of being an immigrant