COST OF ILLEGALS TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Illegal Aliens in Federal, State, and Local Criminal Justice Systems
Summary
REBECCA L. CLARK, SCOTT A. ANDERSON
Publication Date: June 30, 2000
Permanent Link:
http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=410366
The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, grant number 96-DD-BX-0036. The views expressed are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect those of other staff members, officers, or trustees of The Urban Institute or any organization supporting The Urban Institute. The authors would like to thank Bill Sabol, Harvey Meyerson, Bill Adams, and Jeff Passel for their assistance. Any errors are those of the authors.
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Overview of Problem
With the rising concern about the numbers and impacts of illegal aliens in the United States—as evidenced by the sweeping passage of Proposition 187 in California, the immigrant provisions in 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), and Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA)—criminal illegal aliens have become a subject of particular focus. These individuals have not only entered or resided in the United States without the knowledge or permission of the U.S. government, but, while here, they have also violated the laws of the nation, its states, or municipalities.
At state and local levels, the costs of arresting, prosecuting, sentencing, and supervising criminal illegal aliens has become a major issue. Six states have filed suits to force the federal government to reimburse them for criminal justice costs associated with illegal aliens. They have argued that it is the federal government's responsibility to keep illegal aliens out of this country and to expel illegal aliens who have gained entry, and that, therefore, the federal government should offset any fiscal impacts that these illegal aliens have on lower levels of government through direct reimbursement. None of these suits has been successful.
The federal government has taken some steps to reimburse states for some of the costs associated with criminal illegal aliens. Section 510 of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) authorized the Attorney General to reimburse states for the criminal justice costs attributable to undocumented persons. No appropriations for illegal aliens were made until 1994, when the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (Public Law 103-317 or the Crime Act of 1994) authorized $1.8 billion over six years to reimburse states for criminal justice costs associated with illegal aliens. The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) was established to allocate and distribute these monies.
This research describes the characteristics of illegal aliens in the criminal justice system at federal, state, and local levels. A goal of this project is to be as nationally representative as possible, given the limits of existing data sets. The federal-level analysis is based on two data sets, from the Pretrial Services Act Information System (PSAIS) and the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC), which are representative of individuals involved in the federal criminal justice system. (The PSAIS contains information on defendants charged with federal offenses whom pretrial service officers interview, investigate, or supervise. The USSC Monitoring Data Base contains information on criminal defendants sentenced according to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.) The state-level analysis is based on data collected for the SCAAP on the seven states with the most illegal aliens, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas (Warren 1997). All of these states except Illinois filed suits to force the federal government to reimburse them for criminal justice costs associated with illegal aliens. The local-level analysis is limited to one site, Cook County, Illinois, and is based on data collected from the INS District Office and the Cook County Department of Corrections.