Hispanic Populations No Longer Have Excessive Incarceration Or Crime Rates

Hispanic distrust of police officers has also fallen.

Parallel changes appear in who the criminal justice system employs. From 1997 to 2016, the proportion of police officers who were African-American was stable, whereas the proportion who were Hispanic increased 61%. This helps explain why a June 2021 Gallup poll found that the proportion of Hispanics expressing “a lot” or “a great deal” of trust in police was 49%, almost as high as whites (56%), and far greater than that of African-Americans (27%). Hispanic views on policing and crime may also be similar to whites because the two groups rate of being violent crime victims is almost identical (21.3 per thousand persons for Hispanics, 21.0 for whites).

All via Marginal Revolution. 

Hispanics are slightly less likely to be jailed than whites…

A Council on Criminal Justice analysis found that in 2000, the rate of being on probation was 1.6 times higher and the rate of being parole was 3.6 times higher for Hispanics than non-Hispanic whites. But by 2016, the probation disparity had disappeared and the parole disparity had shrunk by 85%. Hispanics still faced a 60% higher risk of being incarcerated in a state prison. This is an enormous and worrying disparity, but the Council noted that it decreased by 60% since 2000…

The dwindling of Hispanic-white disparities is even more remarkable in light of criminal behavior being so heavily concentrated in adolescence and young adulthood. The median age for Hispanics is 29.8 years versus 43.7 for whites, meaning even in a system free of prejudice that punished solely on the basis of crimes committed, we would expect criminal justice disparities between the populations to be growing, not shrinking.

From an earlier post at the same blog. 

The most plausible explanation for Hispanics is assimilation, much like the Irish and Italian immigrants that preceded them. 

A good tracker for the extent of assimilation (which is also high among most Asian American populations) is the rate of out marriage for members of an ethnic group, which approaches 50% for Hispanic and Asian American women in the U.S. and rises from first, to one point five, to second, and so on generations.

Selective deportation of immigrants who have committed crimes has also probably had an impact, both by removing criminals from the community, and by providing a stronger deterrent than for native born individuals weighing the costs and benefits of crime.