Immigration, Legal Status, and Criminal Adjudication in State Courts

移民执法从根本上改变了美国的刑事司法系统，但我们仍然缺乏有关非公民在法律的系统，特别是在州和地方司法管辖区的基本问题的信息。例如，被逮捕的非公民被起诉的比例是多少？什么罪名？被判入狱或入狱的比例是多少？鉴于大多数被监禁的非美国公民都在州监狱中，移民执法越来越多地与当地刑事司法当局合作进行，因此我们对这些问题缺乏了解。因此，当地警察、检察官和法官的决定往往决定刑事司法结果和移民案件的结果。因此，了解当地的刑事司法行为者如何使用这种自由裁量权，对于理解当前的刑事司法实践和当代移民执法至关重要。 缺乏对移民在当地刑事诉讼程序的了解主要是由于数据限制，因为大多数州法院数据库很少提供关于外国出生或法律的地位的信息。该项目通过利用来自加州和德克萨斯州（美国两个最大的移民目的地）的独特犯罪历史数据来解决这一限制，该数据跟踪从逮捕到判刑的刑事案件。具体而言，该项目使用了2006年至2016年期间加州和德克萨斯州所有逮捕的详细案件信息（约2600万），这些信息来自加州刑事犯罪记录信息（科里）计划和德克萨斯州计算机化犯罪历史系统（CCH）。由于科里和CCH数据集都包括被捕者在外国出生的身份信息，因此该项目将是第一个提供当代美国移民案件处理的描述性信息。这项调查的动机是一个中心的研究问题：否则类似的公民和非公民被捕者被抓获从事相同的犯罪行为收到不同的案件结果？利用科里和CCH数据，该项目在案件处理的多个关键阶段调查了这个问题，例如指控的决定，指控犯罪的类型和监禁结果（例如监狱，监狱或没有监禁）。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Immigration enforcement has fundamentally altered the criminal justice system in the United States, yet we still lack information on basic questions regarding noncitizens in the legal system, particularly in state and local jurisdictions. For instance, what proportion of arrested noncitizens are prosecuted? For what charges? What proportion are sentenced to jail or prison? Our lack of knowledge on these questions is consequential given that the majority of incarcerated non-U.S. citizens are in state prisons and immigration enforcement increasingly takes place in partnership with local criminal justice authorities. As a result, the decisions made by local police, prosecutors, and judges often determine both the criminal justice outcome and the immigration case outcome. Thus, understanding how local criminal justice actors use this discretion is fundamentally important for understanding current criminal justice practices and contemporary immigration enforcement. The lack of knowledge on the local criminal processing of immigrants is largely due to data constraints, in that information on foreign-born or legal status is rarely available in most state court databases. This project addresses this limitation by leveraging unique criminal history data from California and Texas - the two largest immigrant destinations in the U.S. - which tracks criminal cases from arrest through sentencing. Specifically, this project uses detailed case information on all arrests in California and Texas between 2006 and 2016 (~26 million) from the California Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) program and the Texas Computerized Criminal History System (CCH). Because both the CORI and CCH datasets include information on foreign-born status for arrestees, this project will be the first to provide even descriptive information on the case processing of immigrants in the contemporary United States. This inquiry is motivated by a central research question: Do otherwise similar citizen and noncitizen arrestees caught engaging in the same criminal conduct receive different case outcomes? Using the CORI and CCH data, this project investigates this question at multiple key stages in case processing, such as the decision to charge, the type of charging offense, and incarceration outcomes (e.g. prison, jail, or no imprisonment).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.