Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves in the UK

This paper examines the relationship between immigration and crime. We consider possible crime effects from the two large waves of immigration that occurred in the UK over the past decade. The first of these was the late 1990s/early 2000s wave of asylum seekers, whilst the second the large inflow of workers from EU accession countries. A simple economics of crime model, dovetailed with the relative labour market situation of these groups of migrants, suggests returns to criminal activity are likely to be very different for the two waves. In fact, we show that the first wave led to a rise in property crime, whilst the second wave had no such impact. There was no observable effect on violent crime for either wave. Evidence from victimization data suggest that the changes in crime rates during the immigrant waves cannot be ascribed to crimes against immigrants, whilst data on incarceration support the view that any immigrant related crime effect is associated only with the first wave of immigrants. JEL