Community Engagement and Public Safety: Evidence From Crime Enforcement Targeting Immigrants

Felipe Goncalves, Elisa Jacome and Emily Weisburst

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

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%.

Keywords: Public Safety; Community Engagement; Victim Reporting; Secure Communities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 K37 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-mig
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2026/adrm/ces/CES-WP-26-23.pdf First version, 2026 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:26-23

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