3. Criminology

a. State of knowledge

There is a substantial literature dealing with race/ethnicity/immigration and crime in the United States; much less in Canada. The focus of this literature review was on the commission of crime. Perhaps this reflects the instructions offered by Metropolis officials; the title is "Immigrants and Criminality." There is essentially no focus in the review on the possibly biased treatment of immigrant/minorities by the criminal justice system. There is little scientific Canadian work that has been done on this latter issue (for a review see Roberts and Doob, 1997) though there has been much polemical, advocacy, and expository writing describing specific incidents.

Most Canadian research on these issues, as well as on policy remedies, has focused on Aboriginal Canadians. In any event, most of the literature cited in the review was non-Canadian.

In Canada, we know that (federal) incarceration rates have been lower for the foreign born than for the native born, throughout the post-war period. (This was NOT the case in the pre-war period, when immigrants were overwhelmingly white European and very over-represented in penitentiaries.) We also know that perception of the issue -- associating criminality with immigrants -- is not a new phenomenon in Canadian history, and has been fuelled by racism and xenophobia.

Despite this there has been and is variation among immigrant groups in crime rates, such that some groups are in fact statistically over-represented and others under-represented. There also seems to be higher rates of delinquency and crime for some second and third generation immigrants, though this may be more prevalent in countries other than Canada. These higher rates may be a result of family disorganization, racism, school failure, poverty, unemployment and underemployment, etc.

There have been and remain links between organized crime and immigrant/ethnic groups. This is an important feature of the history of immigration. Today international links may be easier because of transportation and communications advances. Illegal immigration, specifically the smuggling of people, has also become a form of immigrant crime. But one must remember that organized crime needs political and police corruption, and native born consumers.

Immigrant criminality in Canada seems to be far less than immigrant criminality in Europe, though self-report studies in Europe which use appropriate controls narrow the higher rates for immigrants. In part this may be because Canada has more foreign born than EU nations, and more of a tradition of integration of immigrants, etc. who might therefore feel less alienation and marginality.

There is little in the review about "cultural sensitivity" of the legal system or the operations of the justice and penal system as these relate to equal treatment for immigrant minorities accused or convicted of crime.

b. research agenda

There is a clear need for more research on the issue of allegedly higher rates of criminality of some immigrant groups. What is needed is not only to document the rates, but to attempt to analyze contributing factors. The review cited no research on the specific issue of the migration of criminals to Canada. Some immigrants to Canada bring their "profession" with them; others become launched after arrival in Canada.

There is also a need in Canada for the type of research in the US, which deals with explanatory models of crime involving marital status and other family background variables, human capital variables, the general economic context, as well as racism and poverty. In other words, levels of immigrant and ethnic crime may turn out to be artifacts of other demographic factors.

The review does not really investigate issues relating to policing or the operation of the criminal justice system, from arrest through prosecution, trial, conviction, sentencing, and parole, where possible biases may exist. As indicated, there is a small but growing literature in Canada on cultural sensitivity in policing, the role of minorities as police officers and officials in the criminal justice system, etc. Most of it has to do with Canadian aboriginals, but may have some application to Canadian urban minorities.

There is a need for additional studies of youth gangs and ethnicity/immigrant status in the urban setting, and on why some evidence suggests increasing crime rates among the native born children of immigrants. There is no serious research on an urban "underclass" in Canada, in large part because while this may change the conditions are just not present to justify the use of the term to describe present realities in Canadian cities. There is certainly no similarity to disadvantaged inner city areas and populations in the United States. This has not prevented some policy-makers or commentators from using the term.

There is anecdotal evidence that immigrant minorities may suffer BOTH from overpolicing and underpolicing. Studies of police behaviour vis- a vis minorities exist in the United States, but are almost absent in urban Canada.

c. methodological dilemmas

The field must wrestle with the issue of whether ethnicity/race is a salient factor itself, or if in fact the true "causal" factors of immigrant crime are poverty, ethnic and racial discrimination, age distribution, economic position, family status, systemic bias in the justice system, etc.

It is important that crime measures should be unbiased, e.g. white collar vs violent crime, and that differential crime rates for groups are not an artifact of institutional racism or different police procedures.

The foremost methodological problem is that in Canada there is no systematic collection, dissemination, or analysis of crime data which contain the ethnic or racial origin, or place of birth, of the accused or the convicted. The fear is that such data would be misused to impugn immigrants. They may also overstate immigrant crime because of systemic biases in the types of crimes which lead to arrests are those more likely to be committed by low income immigrants.

Such annual data has been collected and published by the FBI in systematic fashion for over 60 years. Such data are collected for Aboriginal Canadians, and can and have been used to investigate many aspects of Aboriginal encounters with the criminal justice system. Without such official statistics, it is impossible to monitor trends in "ethnic crime" and more important, to analyze biases or discrimination in the criminal justice system, from first encounters with police through arrest, trial, sentencing, and parole. Sporadic surveys are a poor substitute.

It might be possible to study the possible impacts of collecting such crime data in other jurisdictions where this has been done, to assess the consequences for such collection in Canada.