By Nancy Rodriguez and Rebecca Tublitz    

  Immigrants represent a substantial part of the United States: today, 41 million immigrants reside in the U.S., representing 13 percent of the population. Migration of people from different parts of the world to the U.S. have led to dramatic changes in the racial and ethnic make-up of the population. In 1970, Latinos represented 4.6 percent of the U.S. population. Today, just under 1 in 5 people in the U.S. self-identifies as being of “Hispanic or Latino origin”, making it the second largest racial or ethnic group after Whites.1 The 62 million people across the U.S. who identify as Latino represent an enormously diverse array of communities in terms of ethnic heritage, migration histories, citizenship status, and language. Latinos also identify with a wide variety of racial categories, including Black, White, multi-racial, and other.2 However, as the Latino population has grown, so too has the criminal justice system. Since 1970, the U.S. experienced unprecedented growth in the size and scale of its criminal justice system, driven largely by policies favoring the increased use of arrest and incarceration for offenses both minor and more severe.3 Today, 1.2 million people are incarcerated in the nation’s state and federal prisons, while nearly 550,000 are held in jail.4 Annually, almost 9 million are arrested and booked into jail each year. …

Irvine, CA:  UCI School of Sociology: Department of Criminology, Law and Society     2023. 31p.