The 2000 U.S. Census revealed unprecedented changes in the number and distribution of foreign-born people living in the United States. More than 11 percent of the total population—over 31 million people—had been born beyond the nation’s borders. Compared to earlier immigrants, these new arrivals tend to be more geographically dispersed. The major port cities of New York and Los Angeles are no longer the favored entry port, and suburban areas and “second cities” are increasingly common destinations. Suburban areas, in particular, have had to reinvent their public safety and justice delivery systems to incorporate the needs of new immigrants. For law enforcement, this has meant recruiting and hiring bilingual personnel. For others, it has meant training the police force about cultural competency and the public about the functions of law enforcement in the U.S. To find ways of effectively undertaking these cultural and practical challenges, Vera is working with law enforcement agencies across the United States to develop and test new strategies for building partnerships between police and immigrant communities.
Developing the trust and confidence of new immigrant populations is essential for effective policing. This is particularly true for the growing number of police departments that view communities and law enforcement as partners and incorporate community-oriented policing techniques. Gaining this trust and confidence can be difficult, however. Many immigrants, particularly those from countries with corrupt, repressive, and violent police forces, fear the police. Cultural and language barriers make it difficult for police to reach out and persuade newcomers to report crimes, serve as witnesses, provide information on crime problems, or become employees of the police department. The perception that immigrants are reluctant to report crime makes them even more likely to be singled out as targets for crime. These problems have grown more acute in the wake of September 11, 2001. Representatives of immigrant groups and social service providers say that immigrants are now more reluctant than ever to seek police assistance because they fear being detained or deported.
In 2003, Vera worked with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to improve the efficacy of the police liaison with new immigrant communities. We organized working groups with representatives from New York City’s Arab, African, and emerging Latin American immigrant communities. In a series of facilitated forums, these groups and NYPD officials focused on topics such as the relationship between the police and the community; the community's crime, safety, and policing needs and concerns; and strategies for improving police-community relations. The working groups also helped Vera and the NYPD test several initiatives, including the development of fact sheets for police officers and coordinated public education and outreach campaigns on legal rights and responsibilities, reporting crimes, and police procedures. By cultivating alternative channels of communication like the police-immigrant working group forums, this project demonstrated new, more effective, and more culturally sensitive ways to reach out to and to serve New York City's immigrant communities.
Between 2004 and 2005, Vera collaborated with the Policy Research Institute for the Region at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice to convene a series of workshops exploring the relationship between law enforcement and increasingly large and diverse new immigrant communities. The series examined the special issues involved in the rapport between newly arrived Americans and the police. The focus of the series was to generate practical, easy-to-implement strategies for both law enforcement officials and community advocates.
As one of the first studies to examine the national effects of September 11 on law enforcement agencies and communities with high concentrations of Arab American residents, the Vera report Law Enforcement and Arab American Community Relations After September 11, 2001 provides a window into current relations between Arab Americans and local and federal law enforcement. The June 2006 report also documents the challenges that each of these stakeholders face in responding to pressures that are increasingly global in nature and is the result of a National Institute of Justice-funded study conducted between 2002 and 2005. The report also documents promising outreach practices among these groups.
With expertise in the growing intersection between the criminal justice and immigration systems, the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Immigration and Justice partners with law enforcement to develop innovative and tailored solutions to the challenge of policing and serving increasingly diverse communities through technical assistance, training, and research. To learn more about how Vera can help your agency strengthen relations with immigrant communities, browse our project links.
If you are interested in obtaining our technical assistance, contact Oren Root, director of research and acting center director of Vera’s Center on Immigration and Justice.