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Citizenship, Legal Status, and Misdemeanor Justice
Michael T. Light, Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Abstract: Although minor forms of criminal justice contact are increasingly used to identify immigration violators, there is little research at the intersection of immigration and misdemeanor justice. As a result, citizenship remains undertheorized in punishment research and fundamental questions remain unanswered. In this article we introduce the crimmigrant punishment framework to conceptualize the unique case processing consequences for non-U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants. We then draw on rich case data from all arrests in Texas and California between 2006 and 2018 to establish five notable findings. 1) Misdemeanors are common and consequential. We observe over 1.4 million misdemeanor arrests involving non-U.S. citizens, the overwhelming majority of which resulted in criminal charges and formal punishments. 2) The offenses that funnel noncitizens into the misdemeanor system are generally similar to those of U.S. citizens, however, we do observe an appreciable number of arrests linked to noncitizens’ legal status (e.g. giving false information). 3) Once in the misdemeanor system, noncitizens, and especially undocumented immigrants, are significantly more likely to be convicted and incarcerated than similarly situated U.S. citizens. 4) These disparities are more severe in Texas than in California. 5) Over time, the punishment gap between citizens and noncitizens in California has effectively disappeared.
Michael T. Light is Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also affiliated with the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Center for Demography and Ecology, the LaFollette School of Public Affairs, the Center for Law, Society & Justice, the Center for German and European Studies, the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership, the Global Legal Studies Center and has been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law in Freiburg, Germany.
Much of his work lies at the intersection of law and demography. With dramatic increases in international migration, this research investigates citizenship as an emerging mechanism of legal inequality across Western societies. His research in this area has been published in the American Sociological Review, Law & Society Review, Social Forces, the European Journal of Sociology, and the European Sociological Review. Other work on punishment has focused on racial inequality under the law, published in Crime and Justice, Justice Quarterly, and Criminology & Public Policy.
A second strand of his research merges inequality and criminology. Work in this area has varied from the criminological consequences of racial stratification (American Sociological Review, Journal of Quantitative Criminology) to the heterogeneous mortality implications of the prison boom (Journal of Health and Social Behavior).
A third major aspect of his research agenda studies the immigration-crime nexus. Within this vein, his work has examined crime among the undocumented (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), the effect of Latino immigration on violence for different racial/ethnic groups (Social Science Research) and the effects of undocumented immigration on drug and alcohol problems (American Journal of Public Health), violent crime (Criminology), and terrorism (Social Science Research).
Current projects include the collateral consequences of deportation (Rockwool Foundation grant), colorism and punishment (Russell Sage Foundation grant), the criminal case processing of immigrants in state courts (National Science Foundation grant, 2019-2021), and crime and recidivism among the undocumented (National Institute of Justice grant, 2020-2022).
