Lachlan Barraclough 45114803

Do communities with more immigrants have higher crime

rates? With a particular focus on Sexual Offences.

Lachlan Barraclough – Macquarie University Student

2018-11-13

7 Pages

Introduction

In recent years, immigration and crime have become hot topics of debate causing division
between varying views upon the relationship between the two. There are frequent and
common assumptions surrounding commonplace media regarding the impact and number
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of crimes committed by immigrants who live in Australia. In recent years in Australia, media
and politicians have criticized the efforts of state governments for their roles of allowing
immigrant populations to become increasingly violent and prevalent in crime data. (Centre
For Multicultural Youth, 2014) The issue surrounding this stigma is that there is often a lack
of data which is instead replaced with personal anecdotes or labelling the perceived issue
improperly as a false cause where a presumed relationship between one or more things is
the cause between them. These moral panics are often lacking in evidence and suffer from a
number of academic fallacies. This report will analyse NSW crime data and attempt to draw
conclusions based upon the proportion of migrants to sexual offences committed. Based
upon the evidence this data will reflect, this report will then argue whether areas with high
levels of immigration in NSW are directly linked to an increase in sexual offences. The study
finds that there is significant negative correlation between immigration and sexual offences
and assault – non-domestic.

Theories and Hypotheses

Many academics have strongly criticized the reaction by members of public who point out
links between immigration and crime. Sociologist Robert Sampson in 2006 argued that the
drop in crime in the US that began in the early 1990s can be partially attributed to an influx
of immigration that occurred during the same period. (Wortley, 2009) In more recent studies
it has been found that there are sensationalistic media coverages of crimes committed by
immigrants and racial minorities which tends to have a strong impact on public opinion
towards those people groups. (Wortley, 2009) Despite public opinion, literature is more
straightforward in suggesting that there are frequently negative correlations between
percent of immigrants in areas and crime levels. (Wortley, 2009)

One such finding is immigrants are more law-abiding than native born citizens (Martinez,
2008, cited in Wortley, 2009) Immigrants are even less likely to commit crime while residing
in areas with other immigrants when compared to areas of new immigrants in predominately
native born areas. (Wortley, 2009) Despite these facts, concern of crime and fear of crime
have increased in Australia over the past 20 years, filling major news headlines and
dominating crime and political discourse. (Collins and Reid, 2009) The last two decades of
crime and immigration discourse have therefore largely shaped public opinion on the matter
and data reflecting a negative correlation between crime and immigration would likely be a
surprise to many in the public domain. (Collins and Reid, 2009) A common theme of this
discourse is that there a social construction of ethnic criminality which is strongly linked to
fear of the ‘other’. (Collins and Reid, 2009) Due to this social construction of ethnic
criminality, crime is racialised in different ways; the crime becomes seen as worse than
others who commit similar crimes and when media responds to this crime it is done so in an
asymmetrical fashion. (Collins and Reid, 2009)

This discourse has come recently to the fore of public discussion but has existed since
immigration to Australia began. In the decades post-1945 at various times, “Greeks, Italians,
Lebanese, Chinese, and Turkish immigrants have been linked to international criminal
gangs.” (Collins and Reid, 2009) Descriptive terms such as, ethnic gangs, Lebanese gangs,
youth gangs, middle eastern gangs have been thrown around by the media, which have
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consistently been imprecise with their construction of the labels. (Collins and Reid, 2009)
Despite the influence and nature of media in Australia when it comes to disproportionately
labelling immigrants as the frequent source of violence, some critics have come up with
proposed solutions. These solutions consist of several things. Firstly, reduction of the over-
representation of young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds by the media.
Secondly, the often inadequacy of data when reporting crime statistics of immigrants reveals
a challenge of appropriately obtaining an accurate image of the reality of the relationship
between crime and immigration. In concluding the hypotheses section, it is clear that
academically speaking, there is a lacking of correlation between crime and immigration and
the inverse is instead true, that immigrants are in fact less likely to commit crime. This
directly opposes the common media discourse that immigrants are understood as the ones
who instigate crime in certain areas. The null hypotheses of this study is, there is no
substantial significance between the variables. The alternative hypotheses of the paper is
this, that there is at least a neutral or perhaps a negative correlation between crime rates and
immigration levels across NSW.

Data, Variables and Methods

The dataset used for this analysis report is as follows:

Crime Rates of NSW Local Government Areas (LGAs)

 This dataset is created for educational purposes.

 This dataset includes information on crime rates, population, economy and residents
of local government areas (LGA) in New South Wales.
 The data are collected from various sources. (see the codebook of Crime Rates of
NSW LGAs)
 The data is missing some cases but this is taken into consideration when calculating
skewness

The variables used in this data set are as follows:

Dependent Variables:

Two dependent variables are used in this study. Firstly the number of sexual offences
committed per 100,000 population in an LGA. This data is known as sexoff. This is a numeric
value variable that has a large variability over each LGA. When this data was input into a
frequency table the skewness factor was above 0.5, to a total of 0.889 which makes the
sexoff data moderately skewed. The second dependent variable used is non-domestic
assault which also is based off per 100,00 population in an LGA. This data was also input into
a frequency table and was found to have a much higher level of skewness, with a factor of
1.545 which we can deem as highly skewed, most likely due to factors other than levels of
immigration in the area.

The independent variable used in this study is the level of immigrants living in LGAs. This
data is conveyed as a total percentage of the population living in the area. The data is known
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as pctimmig in the data set. In the data, an immigrant is understood to be someone who was
born overseas who now currently resides in a NSW LGA permanently.
The methods used in the data analysis consist of primarily bivariate correlation using the
Pearson Correlation Coefficient. Using this method, the Independent variable was tested
against the dependent variables for having any significant correlation, neutral correlation or
negative correlation. Frequency tables were also produced to discover levels of skewness
factors for each dependent variable data set. Sexual offences and non-domestic assult was
also tested against the Pearson Correlation Coefficient.

Results

The levels of both crime and immigration varied greatly over the many LGAs. Despite this
the results found that there were negative correlations between both sexual offences and
non-domestic assault when compared to levels of immigration in their respected LGAs. This
answers the hypotheses that there is indeed a negative level of correlation between the
dependent and independent variables. This result is supported by a number of studies
describing similar results. Referring to Figures 1 and 2 they both share an outlier in the data
but continue to show a trend in the data.
Figure 1
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Figure 2

This trend
shows that
with the
percentage
increase of immigrants; crime rates of both assault - non-domestic and sexual offences
decrease radically. The scatter plot best displays this information with each individual LGA
being represented on the graph.

The Chi-Square Test, or Pearson Correlation test is a measure of strength in a linear test of
variables, perfect for the data set we are using. Referring to Table 1.

Table 1. Sexual Offences (Rate per Assault – non-domestic violence (Rate

100,000 of Population) per 100,000 of Population)

Total % of immigrants Pearson Correlation: -.509** Pearson Correlation: -.259**

(those who were born Sig. (2-tailed): .000 Sig. (2-tailed): .004
overseas) N: 119 N: 119

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

As expected, the strong negative correlation between the two crime rate indicators reflect
the nature that immigrants in fact commit less crime on average than native-born citizens.
Bivariate association in these cases can be confirmed, an association does exist between the
variables. The association that exists is indeed strong and the pattern is negative in nature
showing that the association between the variables is that the more immigrants there are,
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the lower the crime rates. Using the 2-tailed significance test it can also be concluded that
this aforementioned is true. At this point it is acceptable to reject the null hypotheses and
indeed state that there is a significant negative correlation between immigration levels and
crime in NSW.

Conclusion

While rejecting the null hypotheses, it is now acceptable to answer the question of where to
from here? These findings reinforce the idea that academic understandings of the issue are
affirmed and that negative stigma associated through the media is in fact incorrect. This data
draws upon similar conclusions as the studies stated in this paper. The general findings in this
data show a trend that areas with higher and higher proportions of immigrants on average
commit less crime, plateauing out eventually on a set level. With this data we can begin to
answer many questions that were previously untouchable due to, “many nations simply do
not, on a regular basis, break down their aggregate crime statistics by immigration status or
ethnicity. Thus, the data we do have typically produces many more questions than they
answer.” (Wortley, 2009) We can now begin probing further into these questions and begin
asking: Which immigrant/ethnic group(s) are the least involved with crime? What types
crimes are immigrants most likely to commit? Are some immigrants groups involved in more
crime than others? Do patterns of immigration and crime differ over time and place? All
these questions and more are now the next level of research. Some of the data used was
skewed which highlights the need for more data over the years, despite the skewness,
correlation was still maintained. As the null hypotheses has been rejected, we can accept the
statement as true, ‘that there is at least a neutral or perhaps a negative correlation between
crime rates and immigration levels across NSW.’

Word Count: 1789

References:
 Centre For Multicultural Youth (2014). Fair and Accurate? MIGRANT AND REFUGEE
YOUNG PEOPLE, CRIME AND THE MEDIA. [online] CMY. Available at:
https://www.cmy.net.au/sites/default/files/publication-
documents/Fair_and_Accurate_1.pdf [Accessed 6 Nov. 2018].

 Collins, J. and Reid, C. (2009). Minority Youth, Crime, Conflict, and Belonging in
Australia. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 10(4), pp.377-391.
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 Wortley, S. (2009). Introduction. The Immigration-Crime Connection: Competing

Theoretical Perspectives. Journal of International Migration and Integration / Revue
de l'integration et de la migration internationale, 10(4), pp.349-358.