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Objectives Determine whether the protective role of immigrant concentration extends to individuals with prior criminal histories such as ex-prisoners. Methods The present study used hierarchical logistic regression to examine the association between concentrated immigration and serious recidivism among a cohort of 182,509 ex-inmates nested within 957 zip codes in Florida. The study also considered whether this relationship is applicable to inmates from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Results Results indicate that ex-prisoners have a 21 percent lower likelihood of recidivism when they return to communities with substantial numbers of foreign-born residents. This effect, however, is stronger for some populations than others. Conclusions Immigration serves as a protective feature for even high-risk populations. While this relationship does differ across race and ethnicity, no group experienced a crime-enhancing effect when returning to a community categorized by high immigration. The findings contribute to the burgeoning literature on immigration and crime by demonstrating that immigrant communities provide ex-prisoners with a pro-social context that diminishes their risk for serious recidivism.

Contemporary research suggests that immigrant communities often have lower rates of crime despite their disadvantaged status. Yet prior work often examines the immigration and crime association using only one level of analysis without regard for how this relationship might vary when analyzed across multiple levels of analysis simultaneously. Research also suggests that the immigration‐crime link varies across spatial contexts. Using hierarchical Poisson Regression among a sample of 6,660 tracts nested within 55 cities, we examine whether the relationship between immigration and crime varies when examined at the tract and city levels simultaneously. We also include a cross‐level interaction in our model to test whether the tract‐level association between immigration and crime varies by the size of the foreign‐born population at the city level. Results show that the immigration‐crime link depends on the level of analysis, such that the relationship is positive at the tract level but negative at the city level. However, we find no support for our cross‐level interaction.

The present study examines the relationship between legal status and prisoner misconduct by comparing official disciplinary infraction reports between documented, undocumented, and native-born inmates. We also examine the extent to which such effects vary across different types (i.e., criminal and non-criminal) of reported infractions. Using data from the Florida Department of Corrections, the results reveal that undocumented foreigners have a higher likelihood and a higher frequency of any misconduct and criminal misconduct as well as a higher frequency of non-criminal misconduct than the other two groups, while no such differences are found between documented and native-born prisoners. Our research underscores the salient role of legal status in predicting the in-prison behaviors of foreign-born inmates.