3.1 The criminal justice system as an assimilation milieu for the  (Page 3/7)

I first present the extent to which Hispanics in general, and specifically Hispanic immigrants, are involved in the U.S. criminal justice system as victims, arrestees, and prisoners. Following the criminological tenet that criminal behavior is socially learned, and as such, corresponds to a society’s culture and structure, the significance of this massive Hispanic immigrant involvement is then theoretically interpreted as an assimilation mode. Finally, my study points to research on Hispanic delinquents for clues to how gang interactions and police-immigrant contacts help to assimilate second-generation adolescents to the criminal justice culture and structure.

Hispanics’ involvement in the u.s. criminal justice system

There is limited information on the extent of Hispanic involvement in criminal justice. Even less is available for distinguishing between Hispanic immigrant and native-born criminal justice involvement. However, reasonable generalizations about immigrant involvement can be made on the basis of known characteristics of foreign and native-born Hispanics. Drawing from criminal justice and demographic research, the discussion below examines existing knowledge about Hispanic immigrants and children of immigrants as crime victims, arrestees, and prisoners. Also considered is the limited information on Hispanic undocumented immigrants’ experiences with crime and justice.

Crime victims

The U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) estimated the violent crime victimization rate in 2000 to be 2,900 per 100,000 persons age 12 or older, while the property crime rate was estimated at 17,800 per 100,000 (BJS, 2001). Hispanic victimization rates are slightly higher than non-Hispanics’. In 2000, as shown in Table 1, 2,710 per 100,000 persons ages 12 or older reported being victims of rape, robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault, or personal theft. Hispanic rates were slightly higher than the mean; Blacks had the highest victimization rates, 3,530 offenses per 100,000, while those of Whites and others (Asians and American Indians) were below the mean. The NCVS report shows rates per 1,000 persons. Here they are converted to rates per 100,000 in order to compare them with arrest and imprisonment rates, which are reported per 100,000 population. The figures slightly overestimate the extent of White victimization because NCVS classifies Hispanics’ race according to the respondent’s self-definition of race. Making the simple assumption that all Hispanics define their race as White and subtracting the Hispanic population from the White total, the non-Hispanic White victimization rate is reduced by less than 1 percentage point. The reported Hispanic rates appear to represent a payoff from a decade of diminishing crime. For instance, at the beginning of the 1990s, Hispanic personal victimization rates were 10% higher than non-Hispanics’, and Hispanic property victimization rates were 40% higher than non-Hispanics’.

Table 1. Personal Victimization Rates per 100,000 Persons Age 12 or older, Year 2000. According to Type of Offense, Race and Ethnicity.