Community Engagement and Public Safety: Evidence From Crime Enforcement Targeting Immigrants
April 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-23
Abstract
We study the role of victim reporting in the production of public safety. We examine the Secure Communities program, a crime-reduction policy that involved police in detecting unauthorized immigrants and increased deportation fears in immigrant communities. We find that the policy reduced the likelihood that Hispanic victims report crimes to police and increased offending against Hispanics. The number of reported crimes is unchanged, masking these opposing effects. We show that reduced reporting drives the offending increase and provide the first elasticity of offending to victim reporting in the literature, calculating that a 10% decline in reporting increases offending by 7.9%.
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National Bureau of Economic Research,
Michigan Institute for Teaching and Research in Economics,
University of California Los Angeles,
American Community Survey,
Russell Sage Foundation,
Federal Statistical Research Data Center,
University of California,
Northwestern University
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