the crime report

Arizona’s crime rate is at its lowest levels in the past forty years, as the  Hispanic immigrant population has soared, found a new study from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ).  Researchers also found that drug abuse was higher among the non-Hispanic population in Arizona. The report “Scapegoating Immigrants: Arizona’s Real Crisis Is Rooted in Residents’ Soaring Drug Abuse,“ was compiled using data from Arizona state agencies.

Read the report here.

Use the Crime Report for more information on immigration and crime.

Accountability and civilian oversight have transformed Los Angeles’  police culture. But the job isn’t complete yet.

The good news in L.A. these days is that the epic struggle to reform the Los Angeles Police Department, which caused some of the deadliest American riots of the 20^th Century, and so fiercely dominated and divided the city, is finally nearing its end.

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San Francisco’s police chief denounces Arizona’s new legal crackdown on undocumented immigrants in an exclusive commentary for The Crime Report (more…)

The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ newest publication reports that the number of people incarcerated in Indian Country jails rose 5.8 percent in 2008. The number of jails has also increased; 23 new facilities were built in 2007 and two in 2008. Fifteen percent of inmates were inside for domestic violence, and fifteen percent for assault.

Click here to read the full report.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Jails and Race and Ethnic Issues.

Those who have worked for passage of a new federal hate crime law do not expect many more people to be charged under the measure to be signed today by President Obama, says National Public Radio. The bill, an update to a statute Congress passed in 1968, has been a decade in the making. For the first time, a law that had protected people from attacks motivated by race, religion, or ethnicity will include gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled people. (more…)

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Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has interrogated 4,000 prisoners — including pre-trial, and thus presumably innocent, detainees — at New York’s Rikers Island every year since 2004, according to a new report by East Harlem Against Deportation. The group, led by New York State Senator Jose Serrano, who represents Manhattan’s immigrant-heavy East Harlem neighborhood, was created in May of this year in response to what the neighborhood felt was increasing immigration enforcement by local police and corrections officials.

“Immigration Reform Starts Here: City and State Policy Recommendations to Protect New York Immigrants and Their Families,” recommends limiting ICE’s ability to question pre-trial detainees, and outlines a sample framework for how NYPD might more effectively build trust within the immigrant community.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Immigration, Family Detention and ICE.

The Rise (and Fall) of one of China’s Most Notorious Human Smugglers

In the summer of 1993, ten Chinese would-be immigrants drowned when the Golden Venture, the rickety vessel smuggling them and 276 others to America, ran aground on a New York City beach. After more than a decade of police work, authorities tracked down and convicted Sister Ping, the mastermind of the transnational human trafficking ring, who turned out to be an elderly grandmother living in New York’s Chinatown. The Crime Report’s Cara Tabachnick spoke to investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, who documents the case in his recent book , “The Snakehead.”

THE CRIME REPORT: Exactly how did these snakehead organizations work?

KEEFE: The snakehead organizations were (and are) loosely dispersed transnational networks — non-hierarchical international collaborations in which groups of independent contractors might come together to move a load of people and then separate and go their separate ways. They’re built on connections and driven by opportunism, so a snakehead based in New York might have associates working in Fuzhou, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico.

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Young people may join gangs for protection, but kids in gangs are up to 11 times more likely to be victims of (or witness to) crimes than their peers. This according to a new report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency that examines recent data on gang membership. ”Youth Gangs: Who is at Risk,” compares gang involvement nationally and in Oakland and Richmond, California, two cities long plagued by gangs and violence. 

Among the findings: nationally, Native American youth are twice as likely to join a gang as African American youth; young people who join gangs are also twice as likely to have a mother on public assistance and less likely to live with a biological parent than those who do not.

Click here to read the report.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Gangs.

A new book explores how New York City’s affluent suburbs are coping with the rise of youth gangs

Sarah Garland, a New York-based investigative journalist, was researching gangs in East Harlem when a professor suggested she take a look at Garden City, L.I., an affluent suburb 21 miles east of Times Square.  Garland soon discovered that the inner-city doesn’t have a monopoly on violent youth. Her troubling account of the five years she spent following the largely Hispanic gangs in suburban Long Island is now a book:  “Gangs in Garden City: How Immigration, Segregation, and Youth Violence are Changing America’s Suburbs,” released by Nation Books on June 29th.

The Crime Report’s Cara Tabachnick asked Garland about her findings.

The Crime Report: Long Island is usually considered a safe suburban area outside of New York.  Is there a difference between suburban and city gangs?

Sarah Garland:  Both care about the blocks that they control. The …setting is obviously different,  but the concerns are the same. (more…)