Most studies fail to show any
causal effect of immigration on overall crime rates. Descendants of non-Western immigrants are significantly overrepresented in criminal statistics, especially in violent crimes, traffic violations, and certain sexual offenses. A 2019 report by the Danish reviewed 12 studies and came to the conclusion that it is likely that adults under 30 with an ethnic minority background are overrepresented in crime statistics. It noted methodological differences between the studies making it hard to draw definitive conclusions. A 2019 study reviewing ten studies on the relationship between immigration and crime in Denmark found that different studies came to different conclusions as to whether immigrants were overrepresented, depending on what kind of data was used. Immigrants who have committed crimes may be denied
Danish citizenship. For instance, immigrants who have received a prison sentence of one year or more, or at least three months for crimes against a person cannot receive citizenship. Convictions which have resulted in a fine also carries with it a time period for immigrants, where citizenship applications are rejected up to 4.5 years after the fine. Upon several offences, the period is extended by 3 years. In the 2018-2020 period, 83 people were denied
Danish citizenship because they had committed a serious crime. Among those were people who had received court sentences for gang crime, violence against children and sexual offenses. People who have received a prison sentence of at least one year are barred from receiving citizenship, along with people who have received a prison sentence of at least three months for a crime against a person. In April 2021, the
Mette Frederiksen Cabinet approved regulation which stops awarding citizenship to foreigners who had received a prison sentence in court which also encompassed suspended prison sentences. Previously, awarding citizenship was possible for foreigners with a prison sentence of less than a year. One study of Denmark found that providing immigrants with voting rights reduced their crime rate. A report by
Statistics Denmark released in December 2015 found that 83% of crimes are committed by individuals of Danish origin (88% of the total population), 14% by individuals of non-Western descent and 3% by those of non-Danish Western descent. An index standardized for age shows that crime rates are 48% higher among male immigrants and 140% higher among male descendants of immigrants. At 4%, male migrants aged 15–64 with non-Western backgrounds had twice the
conviction rate against the
Danish Penal Code in 2018, compared to 2% for Danish men. In a given year, about 13% of all male descendants of non-Western migrants aged 17–24 are convicted against the penal code. In 2017, 30% of the prison population were foreign nationals with the largest group being Romanian citizens, followed by Turkish. and Lithuanian citizens. On 1 July 2017, there were 3403 inmates and 2382 of those were Danish citizens. A 2014 study of the random dispersal of refugee immigrants over the period 1986–1998, and focusing on the immigrant children who underwent this random assignment before the age of 15, suggests that exposure to neighbourhood crime increases individual crime propensity.
Finland Immigrant crime in Finland became a topic of public debate in the 1990s-early 21st century period with the arrivals of
Somalis in Finland. In 1998, 10 times more "foreign-looking" men were accused of rape than the overall percentage of foreigners in Finland, which the Chief Inspector interviewed explained that at least part of that disparity could be because, "It may be that a Finnish woman regards it as more of a crime when the perpetrator is foreign. If the rapist is a Finn, the woman might perhaps think more about her own role in what has happened." A 2015 study found that immigrant youth had higher incidence rates in 14 out of 17 delinquent acts. The gap is small for thefts and vandalism, and no significant differences for shoplifting, bullying and use of intoxicants. According to the authors, "weak parental social control and risk routines, such as staying out late, appear to partly explain the immigrant youths' higher delinquency", and "the relevance of socioeconomic factors was modest". According to 2014 official statistics, 24% of rapes are estimated to have been committed by individuals with foreign surnames in Finland.
France A 2006 study found "that the share of immigrants in the population has no significant impact on crime rates once immigrants' economic circumstances are controlled for, while finding that unemployed immigrants tend to commit more crimes than unemployed non-immigrants." As shown in the 2006 study with 1999 French census data calculations, an unemployed nonimmigrant outlier raises the number of crimes by 0.297, and another raises it by 0.546. A study by sociologist
Farhad Khosrokhavar, director of studies at the
EHESS, found that "Muslims, mostly from North African origin, are becoming the most numerous group in [French prisons]." His work has been criticized for taking into account only 160 prisoners in 4 prisons, all close to northern Paris where most immigrants live. According to police figures, 77% of perpetrators of solved rapes in Paris during 2023 were of foreign nationality.
Germany Published in 2017, the first comprehensive study of the social effects of the one million refugees going to Germany found that it caused "very small increases in crime in particular with respect to drug offenses and fare-dodging." A 2021 study found that asylum seekers had no impact on violent crime in Germany. A 2019 study by
Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg economists found that the arrival of nearly one million refugees in 2015 did not increase the likelihood that Germans would be the victims of crime. A January 2018
Zurich University of Applied Sciences study commissioned by the German government attributed over 90% of a 10% overall rise in violent crime from to 2015 to 2016 in Lower Saxony to refugees. The study's authors noted that there were great differences between different refugee groups. Refugees from
North African countries
Algeria,
Tunisia and
Morocco constituted 0.9% of refugees but represented 17.1% of violent crime refugee suspects and 31% of robbery refugee suspects. The latter corresponds to a 35-fold over-representation. Refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq represented 54.7% of the total, but represented 16% of refugee robbery suspects and 34.9% violent crime suspects and were thus underrepresented. A report released by the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation in November 2015 found that over the period January–September 2015, the crime rate of refugees was the same as that of native Germans. According to
Deutsche Welle, the report "concluded that the majority of crimes committed by refugees (67 percent) consisted of theft, robbery and fraud. Sex crimes made for less than 1 percent of all crimes committed by refugees, while homicide registered the smallest fraction at 0.1 percent." According to Deutsche Welle's reporting in February 2016 of a report by the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, the number of crimes committed by refugees did not rise in proportion to the number of refugees between 2014 and 2015. According to Deutsche Welle, "between 2014 and 2015, the number of crimes committed by refugees increased by 79 percent. Over the same period the number of refugees in Germany increased by 440 percent." In April 2017, the crime figures released for 2016 showed that the number of suspected crimes by refugees, asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants increased by 50 percent. The figures showed that most of the suspected crimes were by repeat offenders, and that 1 percent of migrants accounted for 40 percent of total migrant crimes. The different crime rates narrowed in the last ten years; the study speculates that "a new citizenship law finally granting German-born descendants of guest workers German citizenship, as well as increased integration efforts (particularly in schools) and a stronger disapproval of violence" may have contributed to this narrowing. for the first time summarized and singled out all people who entered Germany via the asylum system. The group called "immigrants" includes all asylum seekers, tolerated people, "unauthorized residents" and all those entitled to protection (subsidiary protected, contingent refugees and refugees under the Geneva Convention and asylum). The group represented roughly 2 percent of the German population by end of 2017, but was suspected of committing 8.5 percent of crimes (violations of the German alien law are not included). The numbers suggest that the differences could at least to some extent have to do with the fact that the refugees are younger and more often male than the average German. The statistics show that the asylum-group is highly overrepresented for some types of crime. They account for 14.3 percent of all suspects in crimes against life (which include murder, manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter), 12.2 percent of sexual offences, 11.4 percent of thefts and 9.7 percent of body injuries. The report also shows differences between the origin of migrants. Syrians are underrepresented as suspects, whereas citizens from most African countries, especially northern Africans are strongly overrepresented. Migrants from Afghanistan are particularly overerrepresented as suspects in sex crimes. In 2018, the
Wall Street Journal analysed German crime statistics for crime suspects and found that the foreigners, overall 12.8% of the population, make up a disproportionate share of crime suspects (34.7%) in 2017. In 2017, as in previous years German citizens constituted the largest group of suspects in organised crime trials. The fraction of non-German citizen suspects increased from 67.5% to 70.7% while the fraction of German citizens decreased correspondingly. For the German citizens, 14.9% had a different citizenship at birth. According to statistics collected by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the number of immigrants suspects of sexual offenses in Germany has gone up in absolute numbers, while simultaneously the number of German perpetrators has gone down. At least one immigrant was identified as a suspect in 3404 sexual offense cases in 2016, which were twice as many as the previous year.
DW reported in 2006 that in Berlin, young male immigrants are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than their German peers. Hans-Jörg Albrecht, director of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal law in Freiburg, stated that the "one over-riding factor in youth crime [was] peer group pressure." Whereas the
Gastarbeiter in the 50s and 60s did not have an elevated crime rate, second- and third-generation of immigrants had significantly higher crime rates.
Greece Illegal immigration to Greece has increased rapidly over the past several years. Tough immigration policies in Spain and Italy and agreements with their neighboring African countries to combat illegal immigration have changed the direction of African immigration flows toward Greece. At the same time, flows from Asia and the Middle East—mainly Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Bangladesh—to Greece appear to have increased as well. The evidence now indicates that nearly all illegal immigration to the European Union flows through the country's porous borders. In 2010, 90 percent of all apprehensions for unauthorized entry into the European Union took place in Greece, compared to 75 percent in 2009 and 50 percent in 2008. According to the
ISPI, the Italian prison population in 2018 counted and of those 34% were foreigners, with the largest groups coming from Morocco (), Albania (), Romania (), Tunisia () and Nigeria (). A study of
immigration to Italy during the period 1990–2003 found that the size of immigrant population is positively correlated with the incidence of most types of crime, as well as with the overall number of criminal offenses. However, the causal effect seems limited to some categories of crime: murders, robberies and, to a lesser extent, thefts. A study of Italy before and after the January 2007 European Union enlargement found that giving legal status to the previously illegal immigrants from the new EU members states led to a "50 percent reduction in recidivism". The authors find that "legal status... explains one-half to two-thirds of the observed differences in crime rates between legal and illegal immigrants". According to the latest report by Idos/Unar, immigrants made up 32,6% of prison population in 2015 (four percentage points less than five years before), immigrants making up 8,2% of population in 2015. Prison population data may not give a reliable picture of immigrants' involvement in criminal activity due to different bail and sentencing decisions for foreigners. The 2013 report observes that "immigrants accounted for almost 23 percent of the criminal charges although they represented only 6‐7 percent of the resident population" in 2010. A 2016 report by found that between 2010 and 2014, illegal immigrants committed crimes at approximately 57 times the rate of Italians, and 29 times the rate of other foreigners, though it also found that immigration reduces the crime rate when it is characterized by participation and integration.
Netherlands Allochtoon Dutch youths, especially young
Antillean and
Surinamese Rotterdammers, are more often suspected of crime by the police than other youths. More than half of
Moroccan-Dutch male youths aged 18 to 24 years in Rotterdam have ever been suspected of crimes by the police, while among Netherlands-born youth aged from 18 to 24, 18% have been in contact with the judiciary. According to a 2009 report commissioned by Justice Minister
Ernst Hirsch Ballin, 63% of the 447 teenagers convicted of serious crime are children of parents born outside the Netherlands. All these cases concern crime for which the maximum jail sentence is longer than eight years, such as robbery with violence, extortion, arson, public acts of violence, sexual assault, manslaughter and murder. The ethnic composition of the perpetrators was: native Dutch – 37%; Moroccans – 14%; Unknown origin – 14%; "other non-Westerners" – 9%; Turkish – 8%; Surinamese – 7%; Antillean – 7%; and "other Westerners" – 4%. In the majority of cases, the judges did not consider the serious offences to be grave enough to necessitate an unconditional jail sentence. For Moroccan immigrants, whether they originate from the underdeveloped parts of Morocco has a modest impact on their crime rate. One study finds that "crime rates in the Netherlands are higher among Moroccans who come from the countryside and the
Rif, or whose parents do, than among those who come from the urban provinces in Morocco and from outside the Rif, or whose parents do." In 2015, individuals with a Moroccan background were, not taking their age into account, almost six times as likely to be suspected for a crime compared to the native Dutch. Of the first generation 2.52% was suspected of a crime, of the second generation 7.36%, of males 7.78% and women 1.34%. Using 2015 data,
Statistics Netherlands concluded that non-Western male immigrant youths had been relatively often suspected of a crime: 5.42% in the group aged between 18 and 24, compared with 1.92% for native Dutch of the same age. For both male and female non-Western immigrants of all ages combined the numbers were 2.4% for the first generation and 4.54% for the second. The absolute crime rate had dropped by almost a half since the early twenty-first century, for both native Dutch and non-western immigrants. A study found the estimated security costs per person due to the costs of criminal justice for prosecution, trial and prison attributed to the number of persons at each stage showed in 2016 large differences with the region of origin of immigrants, with low security costs on average for immigrants from Scandinavia, United Kingdom, Indonesia and East Asia. In 2017, a study concluded that asylum seekers in the Netherlands were less criminal than native Dutch with the same combination of age, gender and socio-economic position.
Norway Spain A 2008 study finds that the rates of crimes committed by immigrants are substantially higher than nationals. The study finds that "the arrival of immigrants has resulted in a lack of progress in the reduction of offences against property and in a minor increase in the number of offences against Collective Security (i.e. drugs and trafficking). In the case of nationals, their contribution to the increase in the crime rate is primarily concentrated in offences against persons."
Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) published a study that analyzes records in the Register of Convicted in 2008. The data show that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics: 70% of all crimes were committed by Spaniards and 30% by foreigners. Foreigners make up 15% of the population. A 2019 study found that asylum seekers exposed to civil conflict and mass killing during childhood were 35% more prone to violent crimes than co-national asylum seekers who were not exposed to conflict. The conflict exposed cohorts have a higher propensity to target victims from their own nationality.
Sweden (Swedish:
Brottsförebyggande Rådet or BRÅ) Those with immigrant background are over-represented in Swedish crime statistics. Research shows that socioeconomic factors, such as unemployment, poverty, exclusion, language, and other skills explain most of difference in crime rates between immigrants and natives. In 2022, Annika Lindberg of the
University of Gothenburg said that in Sweden there has been a "sort of merging of migration and crime in discourse" even though there is "no sort of research showing that there exists such a causal kind of relationship." According to the vice
National Police Commissioner of the Swedish Police Authority, intelligence gathered by police showed that there are about 40 ethnic crime clans in Sweden who came to the country in order to pursue organized crime. They are primarily settled in Stockholm, Södertälje, Gothenburg, Malmö, Landskrona and Jönköping. In these clans, the extended family raises the children to take over the organized crime activities and they have no ambitions to become integrated into Swedish mainstream society. Swedish prime minister
Stefan Löfven had long denied that crime gangs had anything to do with immigration, but in September 2020 changed his stance in an SVT interview, where he said that a large immigration led to difficulties with integration which in turn increased risk of crime. About one third of new prison inmates in the 2011–2019 did not have Swedish citizenship, where there was an increase in the share from 29% in 2011 to 33% in 2019. A 2014 survey of several studies found that people with foreign background are, on average, two times more likely to commit crimes than those born in Sweden. This figure has remained stable since the 1970s, despite the changes in numbers of immigrants and their country of origin. Some studies reporting a link on immigration and crime have been criticized for not taking into account the population's age, employment and education level, all of which affect level of crime. In general, research that takes these factors into account does not support the idea that there is a link between immigration and crime.
Recent immigration to Sweden Crime and immigration was one of the major themes of the
2018 Swedish general election. In 2018, Swedish Television investigative journalism show Uppdrag Granskning analysed the total of 843
district court cases from the five preceding years and found that 58% of all convicted of rape had a foreign background and 40% were born in the
Middle East and
Africa, with young men from
Afghanistan numbering 45 stood out as being the most next most common country of birth after Sweden. When only analysing rape assault (Swedish:
överfallsvåldtäkt) cases, that is cases where perpetrator and victim were not previously acquainted, 97 out of 129 were born outside Europe. Viral falsehoods have circulated in recent years that tie immigrants and refugees to an alleged surge of crime in Sweden. According to
Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at
Stockholm University, "What we're hearing is a very, very extreme exaggeration based on a few isolated events, and the claim that it's related to immigration is more or less not true at all." A 2020 pan European comparative study conducted by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention showed that if reported and cleared rapes are measured in a comparable way, the number of rapes in Sweden are close to the European average. According to Klara Selin, a sociologist at the National Council for Crime Prevention, the major reasons why Sweden has a higher rate of rape than other countries is due to the way in which Sweden documents rape ("if a woman reports being raped multiple times by her husband that's recorded as multiple rapes, for instance, not just one report") and a culture where women are encouraged to report rapes. Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at the University of Stockholm, said foreign-born residents are twice as likely to be registered for a crime as native Swedes but that other factors beyond place of birth are at play, such as education level and poverty, and that similar trends occur in European countries that have not taken in a lot of immigrants in recent years. According to data gathered by Swedish police from October 2015 to January 2016, 5,000 police calls out of 537,466 involved asylum seekers and refugees. According to Felipe Estrada, professor of criminology at
Stockholm University, this shows how the media gives disproportionate attention to and exaggerates the alleged criminal involvement of asylum seekers and refugees. A Swedish Police report from May 2016 found that there have been 123 incidents of sexual molestation in the country's public baths and pools in 2015 (112 of them were directed against girls). In 55% of cases, the perpetrator could be reasonably identified. From these identified perpetrators, 80% were of foreign origin. The same report found 319 cases of sexual assault on public streets and parks in 2015. In these cases, only 17 suspected perpetrators have been identified, 4 of them Swedish nationals with the remainder being of foreign origin. Another 17 were arrested, but not identified. In March 2018, newspaper
Expressen investigated
gang rape court cases from the two preceding years and found that there were 43 men having been convicted. Their average age was 21 and 13 were under the age of 18 when the crime was committed. Of the convicted, 40 out of the 43 were either immigrants (born abroad) or born in Sweden to immigrant parents. Another investigation by newspaper Aftonbladet found that of 112 men and boys convicted for gang rape since July 2012, 82 were born outside Europe. The median age of the victims was 15, while 7 out of 10 perpetrators were between 15 and 20. According to professor Christian Diesen, a foreigner may have a lower threshold to commit sexual assault due to having grown up in a misogynist culture where all women outside the home are interpreted as available. Also professor Henrik Tham stated that there was a clear over-representatation of foreigners and cultural differences, while also adding that few cultures allow such behaviour. Professor
Jerzy Sarnecki instead emphasized socioeconomic factors and that police may be more diligient in investigating crimes by foreigners.
Past immigration to Sweden A 2005 study by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention found that people of foreign background were 2.5 times more likely to be suspected of crimes than people with a Swedish background, including immigrants being four times more likely to be suspected of for lethal violence and robbery, five times more likely to be investigated for sex crimes, and three times more likely to be investigated for violent assault. The report was based on statistics for those "suspected" of offences. The Council for Crime Prevention said that there was "little difference" in the statistics for those suspected of crimes and those actually convicted. A 2008 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention finds evidence of discrimination towards individuals of foreign descent in the Swedish judicial system. The 2005 report finds that immigrants who entered Sweden during early childhood have lower crime rates than other immigrants. By taking account of socioeconomic factors (gender, age, education and income), the crime rate gap between immigrants and natives decreases. The 2005 study reported that persons from
North Africa and Western Asia were over-represented in crime statistics, A 1996 report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention determined that between 1985 and 1989 individuals born in Iraq, North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia), Africa (excluding Uganda and the North African countries), other Middle East (Jordan, Palestine, Syria), Iran and Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria) were convicted of rape at rates 20, 23, 17, 9, 10 and 18 greater than individuals born in Sweden respectively. A 2013 study argued that BRÅ 2005’s reliance on adult education and income as controls was problematic, since those factors may themselves be affected by earlier offending, but it did not make the same criticism of the 1996 report. While first-generation immigrants have the highest offender rate, the offenders have the lowest average number of offenses, which indicates that there is a high rate of low-rate offending (many suspected offenders with only one single registered offense). The rate of chronic offending (offenders suspected of several offenses) is higher among indigenous Swedes than first-generation immigrants. Second-generation immigrants have higher rates of chronic offending than first-generation immigrants but lower total offender rates.
United Kingdom Historically, Irish immigrants to the United Kingdom in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were considered over-represented amongst those appearing in court. Research suggests that policing strategy may have put immigrants at a disadvantage by targeting only the most public forms of crime, while locals were more likely able to engage in the types of crimes that could be conducted behind locked doors. An analysis of historical courtroom records suggests that despite higher rates of arrest, immigrants were not systematically disadvantaged by the British court system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On 30 June 2022 there were 9,682 prisoners from 164 different countries in the jails of England and Wales. Albania, Poland and Romania formed the highest percentage of foreign nationals in UK prisons. During the 2000s, there was a 111% increase of foreign nationals in UK prisons. According to one study, "there is little evidence to support the theory that the foreign national prison population continues to grow because foreign nationals are more likely to commit crime than are British citizens or more likely to commit crime of a serious nature". A study of two large waves of immigration to the UK (the late 1990s/early 2000s asylum seekers and the post-2004 inflow from EU accession countries) found that the "first wave led to a modest but significant rise in property crime, while the second wave had a small negative impact. There was no effect on violent crime; arrest rates were not different, and changes in crime cannot be ascribed to crimes against immigrants. The findings are consistent with the notion that differences in labor market opportunities of different migrant groups shape their potential impact on crime." A 2008 study found that the crime rate of Eastern European immigrants was the same as that of the indigenous population. An analysis of data by
The Telegraph in 2024 found that the overall imprisonment rate of foreign nationals was 27 per cent higher than for British citizens. A 2025 analysis by the Centre for Migration Control, an anti-immigration think tank, found that non-British citizens were around 3.5 times more likely than British citizens to be arrested for sexual offenses. According to the data from the Ministry of Justice, obtained under freedom of information laws, foreign nationals have disproportionately committed sex crimes between 2021 and 2023. Afghans and Eritreans – were more than 20 times more likely to account for sexual offence convictions than British citizens, according to the data. Overall, foreign nationals were 71 per cent more likely than Britons to be responsible for sex crime convictions. In terms of overall crime nationals from Albania topped the crime league table; followed by Moldova, Congo, Namibia and Somalia. Official GOV.UK data for the period of April 2022 to March 2023 has the arrest rate for White British at 9.2 per every 1,000 people. This compares to 2.8 for Chinese, 11.3 for Pakistani, 22.7 for Black Caribbean, and 52.4 for Black other. Data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), drawn from the Police National Computer and obtained under freedom of information laws, showed that 26 per cent of the 1,453 sex assault convictions on women in 2024 were accounted for by foreign nationals. A further 8 per cent were committed by offenders of "unknown" nationalities, a category which will include some foreign nationals, meaning the overall proportion could be higher. A House of Commons report from July 2024 shows that foreign nationals make up 10% of the prison population, form over 168 countries, with the largest section being those born within EEA European countries. Criminals from just three countries account for 40 per cent of foreign prisoners in Scotland's jails, according to analysis of official figures via Scottish Prison Service (SPS) data. Just over four in 10 of the total were from just three countries – Albania, Poland and Vietnam. More than a quarter (26.3 per cent) of Eritreans living in Scotland are estimated to be in prison and more than one in five (21.9 per cent) Somalians. Almost one in six Albanians (15.8 per cent) and Vietnamese (15.2 per cent) people living in Scotland are estimated to be imprisoned, according to comparison of census and SPS data. ==Americas==