3.1 The criminal justice system as an assimilation milieu for the  (Page 2/7)

Although Hispanics are not the only immigrant group involved in the American criminal justice system, their predominance in recent U.S. immigration justifies examining their criminal justice experiences. By official U.S. Census count, 32.8 million Hispanic-origin persons, equivalent to 12% of the total population, resided in the U.S. in 2000. Thirty-nine percent of Hispanics in 2000 were foreign-born, 28% were native-born of foreign or mixed parentage, and the remainder (33%) were born in the United States. As 45% of the foreign-born population, Hispanics comprise the largest foreign-born group. Hispanics are also the largest “foreign stock” group, being 40% of foreign-born or native-born persons of foreign or mixed parentage (Schmidley, 2001, p. 24).

The distinction between adult immigrants and children of immigrants is very relevant to understanding criminal justice involvement. Adult immigrants are defined here as foreign-born persons who migrated after the age of 18. For the purposes of my discussion, children of immigrants are defined here as foreign-born persons under the age 18 who migrated together with, before, or after their parents, and as native-born persons under age 18 with one or two foreign-born parents. It is estimated that about 45% of U.S. Hispanics are native-born of immigrant parents. About 75% of these are under age 25 (Farley&Alba, 2002) The percentages are estimated from Farley&Alba’s analysis of the characteristics of nationalities accounting for 400,000 or more first and second generation migrants. They include Puerto Ricans, but they are excluded from the estimates above. . Much can be added to our knowledge of crime and justice by examining the linkage between immigration and criminal justice experiences, and by focusing on Hispanics’ experiences in these two social processes.

The purpose of my discussion is to contribute to broader theoretical issues in the sociology of immigration. First, although much is known about assimilation as an immigration outcome what factors influence assimilation, who assimilates, under what conditions, and immigrant social characteristics much less is known about the interactions that lead to differential assimilation outcomes. Discussions on assimilation refer to the interaction processes by which assimilation happens or not. But what kinds of interactions produce this? What happens in teacher-student interaction, for example, that influences immigrants’ children to avoid speaking their parents’ native tongue? This is not to say that the topic is not discussed. It is just that the empirical and theoretical focus is on assimilation, not process. The types of interactions that Hispanics experience in the criminal justice system as victims or perpetrators, with law enforcement officials can help us to understand an aspect of the assimilation experience.

The second theoretical issue pertains to sociology’s focus on the end products of the immigrant assimilation process: to what extent immigrants become embedded in their new culture and society, and what social characteristics and conditions are currently going on in immigration theory and research, whether current immigration influences these outcomes. This may be seen by the debate over transnationality: Do assimilation patterns respond to a globalized economy and communication system, or is the traditional conception of immigration— as inevitably leading toward integration into the host culture and society— still valid (Alba&Nee, 1997; Glick Schiller, 1999; Portes, Guarnizo,&Landolt, 1999)? If the criminal justice experiences of the children of immigrants demonstrate assimilation into the American criminal justice system, this would seem to strengthen the traditional notion of immigration. In this debate, the Hispanic experience in the U.S. is salient because of the prominence of Hispanics in current immigration streams (as demonstrated below).