DOES UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRATION INCREASE VIOLENT CRIME?*

Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime?∗

What is the short-run impact of media violence on crime? Laboratory experiments in psychology find that exposure to media violence increases aggression. In this paper, we provide field evidence on this question. We exploit variation in violence of blockbuster movies between 1995 and 2002, and study the effect on same-day assaults. We find that violent crime decreases on days with higher theater...

The Politics of Refuge: Sanctuary Cities, Crime, and Undocumented Immigration

This paper assesses the claim that sanctuary cities – defined as cities that expressly forbid city officials or police departments from inquiring into immigration status – are associated with post-hoc increases in crime. We employ a causal inference matching strategy to compare similarly situated cities where key variables are the same across the cities except the sanctuary status of the city. ...

Does Terrorism Increase Crime? A Cautionary Tale

Crime Perception and Victimization in Europe: Does Immigration Matter?

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the effect of changes in immigration in region of residence on the likelihood of being a crime victim and on the subjective representation of criminality in local area of residence. To this purpose, the analysis exploits the recent immigration waves that took place in western European regions in the 2000s, using European Social Survey data matched wi...

Does Immigration Enforcement Reduce Crime? Evidence from “Secure Communities”

Abstract. Does immigration enforcement actually reduce crime? Surprisingly, little evidence exists either way—despite the fact that deporting noncitizens who commit crimes has been a central feature of American immigration law since the early twentieth century. We capitalize on a natural policy experiment to address the question and, in the process, provide the first empirical analysis of the m...