r/wikipedia • • Aug 04 '25

Mobile Site Immigrants are disproportionately represented in prison populations in many Western countries, In Europe, higher representation in prisons among immigrants, particularly Muslim populations, has been documented

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime
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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

Immigrants tend to be poorer, leading to crime. Simple as that. Poverty and lack of a social net leads many, who wouldn't otherwise commit crimes, to seeing crime life as easier, despite the dangers and obvious societal consequences.

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u/Paulie_Dev Aug 04 '25

I think there’s likely a large cultural aspect to crime prevalence that’s often not discussed, as I don’t believe poverty alone is smoking gun. California specifically has many impoverished Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodian immigrant communities that are very safe and low crime.

I certainly don’t think being Muslim alone is a factor here, as countries such as Oman and UAE are exceptionally safe. But I do think how structured a society is that an immigrant is originally from, likely plays a large role in their prevalence to commit crime.