Objectives: A growing body of research finds that immigration has a null or negative association with neighborhood crime rates. We build on this important literature by investigating the extent to which one theory, institutional completeness theory, may help explain lower crime rates in immigrant communities across the Southern California region. Specifically, we test whether two key measures of institutional completeness—the presence of immigrant/ethnic voluntary organizations in the community and the presence and diversity of immigrant/ethnic businesses in the community—account for lower crime rates in some immigrant communities. Method: Compiling a tract-level data set utilizing various data sources, we estimate negative binomial regression models predicting violent and property crime levels that include measures of institutional completeness while controlling for a range of neighborhood correlates of crime. We also account for possible endogeneity by estimating instrumental variable models. Results: The results reveal very limited support for institutional completeness theory. Conclusions: Several possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

中文翻译：

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移民社区的制度完善度和犯罪率

目标：越来越多的研究发现，移民与邻里犯罪率之间没有关联或为负关联。我们通过研究一种理论（制度完整性理论）可以在多大程度上帮助解释整个南加州地区移民社区的犯罪率来建立这一重要文献。具体而言，我们测试了两个重要的制度完整性衡量标准（社区中是否存在移民/民族志愿组织以及社区中存在的移民/民族企业和多样性）是否导致某些移民社区的犯罪率降低。方法：利用各种数据源编译一个区域级数据集，我们估算了预测暴力和财产犯罪水平的负二项式回归模型，其中包括制度完整性的度量，同时控制一系列犯罪的邻里相关性。我们还通过估计工具变量模型来考虑可能的内生性。结果：结果表明，对制度完整性理论的支持非常有限。结论：讨论了这些发现的几种可能的解释。