Crime &Delinquency, Ahead of Print.
A fair amount of research has shown that immigrants do not necessarily commit more crimes than native-born individuals. However, it remains unclear why patterns of crime vary across first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants, and native-born individuals. Using a sample of individuals from the World Value Survey Wave 6, we conduct a multilevel analysis to examine the impact of various factors on the justification of morally dubious behavior and violence across different countries. Specifically, we explore individual-level attributes and country-level structural factors and test whether these variables explain distinct crime patterns between different generations of immigrants and native-born individuals. Additionally, we investigate whether geopolitical contexts specific to immigration (e.g., the proportion of immigrants in the population and discrimination) are linked to crime patterns of different immigrant generation statuses.