Immigration and the Ethnic Distribution of Homicide in Miami,1985-1995

Abstract

This article extends the city-level research tradition initiated by Marvin E. Wolfgang in a unique comparison of immigrant (Haitian, Latino) and native born (Anglo, African American) criminal homicide in the city of Miami, Florida. Although previous research has been limited primarily to Anglo and African American victims and offenders, direct access to Miami police records on 1,450 homicides for the period 1985 through 1995 allowed the authors to compare the homicide risk of Anglos, African Americans, Haitians, and Latinos. Although current policy debates focus on immigration as a contributing factor to rising crime rates, the results indicate that the groups with higher proportions of foreign-born members have comparatively low homicide rates. The findings underscore the need to extend homicide research to include diverse ethnic groups in designs that attempt to disentangle the relative influence of social conditions, ethnicity, and immigration on patterns of criminal homicide.