3.1 The criminal justice system as an assimilation milieu for the

This manuscript has been peer-reviewed, accepted, and endorsed by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) as a significant contribution to the scholarship and practice of education administration. In addition to publication in the Connexions Content Commons, this module is published in the International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation , Volume 5, Number 1 (January – March 2010). Formatted and edited in Connexions by Julia Stanka, Texas A&M University.

The criminal justice system as an assimilation milieu for the hispanic immigrant

Orlando Rodríguez

In this study, I explored the hypothesis that as an American societal institution, the criminal justice system is an important vehicle for the assimilation of Hispanic immigrants, especially second-generation children of immigrants. I first examined the extent to which Hispanics, especially Hispanic immigrants, are involved in the criminal justice system as victims, arrestees, and prisoners. Hispanics are generally victimized in proportion to their representation in the population, but like Black Americans and Native Americans, they are over represented among arrestees and prisoners. Criminal justice data provide little information on the characteristics of legal or undocumented immigrants, and there is also little information on the social characteristics of undocumented immigrants. However, analysis of census data suggests that Hispanics involved in the criminal justice system are socially more similar to young native-born Hispanics, the second immigrant generation, than to immigrants. If Hispanics are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, this suggests that interactions between law enforcement officials and Hispanic victims and criminals can serve as a vehicle for assimilation, and this should manifest itself in the nature of Hispanic crime involvement. Very little research exists to verify this hypothesis, but the ethnographic gang research literature can serve as an instrument to explore Hispanic assimilation experiences in the criminal justice system.

I explored the hypothesis that the criminal justice system is an important part of the Hispanic assimilation process. In focusing on assimilation as an immigration outcome, sociology has paid little attention to the social venues in which assimilation takes place. The institutions and social group settings in which there is interaction among immigrants and between immigrants and natives produces different assimilation outcomes. It is argued below that as an important American institution, the criminal justice system routinely contains social interactions that influence immigrant assimilation into American society, especially into American-style crime and criminal justice involvement. This is especially the case for children of immigrants, the second-generation.