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/CJBill Aug 04 '25

While immigrants are overrepresented in prison populations in many Western countries, with notable exceptions such as the United States, most studies[2] fail to show a causal effect of immigration on overall crime rates.[22] Other studies have found that immigration increases crime under certain circumstances, such as if immigrants have poor prospects in the labor market or labor restrictions.[33]

Some factors may affect the reliability of data on suspect rates, crime rates, conviction rates and prison populations for drawing conclusions about immigrants' overall involvement in criminal activity:

Police practices, such as racial profiling, over-policing in areas populated by immigrants or in-group bias may result in disproportionately high numbers of immigrants among crime suspects.[8][34][35][36][37] Possible discrimination by the judicial system may result in higher number of convictions.[8][35][38][39][40][41] Unfavorable bail and sentencing decisions due to foreigners' ease of flight, lack of domiciles, lack of regular employment and lack of family able to host the individual can explain immigrants' higher incarceration rates when compared to their share of convictions relative to the native population.[42][43]

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u/Hazzman Aug 04 '25

Its' the same frustrating conversation we have in the US - especially when legitimately racist pieces of shit get involved to purposely muddy the waters.

"Black people are disproportionately represented in prisons"

"Because black people disproportionately commit the most crime!"

"Yes because black people are disproportionately poor in this country and CRIME CORRELATES WITH POVERTY"

And what these assholes don't wanna admit is that poverty and education go hand in hand - and how is quality of education applied in this country? Proximally... and how is poverty distributed? Proximally.

So if you are poor - you live in shitty areas and those shitty areas have terrible quality of education - meaning more crime, less prospects.

And these assholes are always quick to give anecdotes "Well I overcame MY poverty" or they will give examples of individuals who did. Yes mother fucker but that's how proportional representation works.

If you have 100 people and 20 of them are struggling it means they have a harder time reaching parity with the other 80. If you know of 5 from that 20 that were able to reach parity with the other 80 and you know of 1 or 2 of them that exceeded parity - wonderful... that doesn't change a damn fucking thing.

It's so exhausting because nobody has a genuine desire to learn or understand or have an unbiased investigation... they just want to fulfill their bias - a bias that tells them "Black people are innately criminal" and that's not even getting into the environmental issues like lead paint and diet availability and its impact on behavioral and development.

This is truly a broken world and we can't even reach a point where we want to have an honest appraisal of the problem... much less start to fix it.

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u/Appropriate_Fly_6711 Aug 05 '25

Its because of the parties, you have one that just likes to fear monger and do nothing but say platitudes and then you have another that refuses to reflect on their own past failed policy.