Does Rational Choice Help to Explain Offending Differences Across Immigrant Generations? Focusing on Serious Adolescent Offenders

Objectives: Accumulating research finds that immigrants are less likely to offend compared to their native-born counterparts in the United States. Less understood are the factors that help account for this disparity in offending. Because there are reasons to believe that immigrants weigh the costs and benefits of crime differently than their U.S.-born peers, we explore the utility of a rational choice perspective to explain the disparity in offending across immigrant generations. Methods: Utilizing data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, multilevel mixed effects models are employed to assess if perceptions of rewards and costs of crime help explain differences in offending trajectories and desistance across immigrant status. Results: Rational choice-related variables emerge as significant predictors of offending and help to explain, in part, why first-generation immigrants are less likely to offend. In particular, the perceived risk of arrest appears to play a key role and interacts with immigrant status. Conclusions: The results from this research suggest that first-generation immigrants with a higher perceived risk of arrest reported lower offending compared to second- and third-plus-generation youth. We consider the theoretical implications of the rational choice perspective to explain the divergence in offending across immigrant generation groups.