The alleged relationship between immigration and criminality

Hate speech The alleged relationship between immigration and criminality The alleged relationship between immigration and criminality

Oftentimes, in the public arena, a direct association is drawn between immigration and criminality. As reported in the Idos dossier from twenty twenty, crimes being equal, those committed by foreigners generally produce more fear, distrust, and resentment. Migrants are both inferiorised and demonised. This narrative is then instrumentally manipulated by media and politicians to gather support.

Data on foreign inmates has to be contextualised.

On a first reading, indeed the share of foreigners on the total amount of inmates in Italian and European prisons outweighs the share of foreigners on the total population. This figure should however be interpreted critically, through a series of clarifications. First and foremost, we need to consider that foreigners' socio-economic conditions are on average worse than natives'. Socio-economic hardship is tightly related to criminality.

Secondly, the condition of irregularity, which characterises most foreign offenders, forcibly leads people towards illegality and thus inevitably to crime. Lastly, a relevant point is the type of offense, which has different features among foreigners and natives - usually foreigners commit less serious offenses, punished through shorter sentences.

More foreigners, unsafer societies?

One thing worth noting is that, despite the tendency to criminalise migrants, if we analyse the figures we see that European societies have not become less safe as the foreign share of the population - particularly, asylum seekers, structurally more exposed to irregularity - increased.

In all of the larger European Union countries, the number of asylum seekers has increased