Immigrant crime in Taiwan: perspectives from Eastern Asia

Abstract

The objective of this study is to test Hirschi's social bonding theory by exploring the relationship between immigration and crime in Taiwan. Taiwan is a developed country with a large immigrant population from East Asian countries and Mainland China. Social disorganization theory, strain and opportunity theories, and cultural theories have been developed to provide explanations for immigrant crime nearly hundred years ago. Tests of the above theories, however, find little support for hypotheses. Hirschi 1 suggests that the more attached persons are to other members of the society, the more they believe in the values of conventional society, and the more they invest in and are involved in conventional lines of activity, the less likely they are to deviate. Four elements including attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief of social bonding theory were tested with immigrants in Taiwan. This study contains 256 responses from Taipei prison and 237 non-offender responses from Taiwan's five cities and counties. This study used logistic regression to predict immigrant crime and applied multiple regression to predict immigrant delinquency. There were several propositions tested in this study that may add to existing scholarship. First, this study, using Taiwan's sample, empirically studied social bonding theory and tested its validity across a different culture and country while the number of studies of social bonding theory conducted in East Asia is fairly small. Secondly, belief is the single best predictor of immigrant crime and delinquency rate. Age and gender have significant effects on predicting immigrant crime and delinquency. Third, immigrants who work full time and hold strong beliefs are less likely to engage in criminal and delinquent acts.