Charis Kubrin
Professor UC Irvine
- Irvine CA
Charis E. Kubrin is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and (by courtesy) Sociology.
Media
Social
Biography
Professor Kubrin has received several national awards including the Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology (for outstanding scholarly contributions to the discipline of criminology); the Coramae Richey Mann Award from the Division on People of Color and Crime, the American Society of Criminology (for outstanding contributions of scholarship on race/ethnicity, crime, and justice); and the W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Western Society of Criminology (for significant contributions to racial and ethnic issues in the field of criminology). Most recently she received the Paul Tappan Award from the Western Society of Criminology (for outstanding contributions to the field of criminology). In 2019, she was named a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology.
Issues of race and justice are at the forefront of Professor Kubrin’s TEDx talk, The Threatening Nature of…Rap Music?, which focuses on the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials against young men of color. Along with Barbara Seymour Giordano, Kubrin received a Cicero Speechwriting Award for this talk in the category of “Controversial or Highly Politicized Topic.”
Areas of Expertise
Accomplishments
Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award
from the American Society of Criminology (for outstanding scholarly contributions to the discipline of criminology)
Coramae Richey Mann Award
from the Division on People of Color and Crime, the American Society of Criminology (for outstanding contributions of scholarship on race/ethnicity, crime, and justice)
W.E.B. DuBois Award
from the Western Society of Criminology (for significant contributions to racial and ethnic issues in the field of criminology)
Paul Tappan Award
from the Western Society of Criminology (for outstanding contributions to the field of criminology)
Education
University of Washington
PhD
Sociology
Affiliations
- American Society of Criminology : Fellow
Links
Media Appearances
Attacks on ICE up 1,000%? Trump administration claim not backed up by court records
Los Angeles Times online
2025-12-01
Charis Kubrin, a professor of law, criminology and sociology at UC Irvine, said the administration’s trumpeting of a more than 1,000% increase is misleading when the jump is coming from a baseline of almost zero assaults against agents. “This is what we call in sociology a moral panic,” she said. “A moral panic is created when statistics and other things are used to kind of create or socially construct a problem that is bigger than it is.”
New data shows 1 in 4 ICE arrests happened in Texas under Trump’s immigration crackdown
USA Today online
2025-11-03
The rhetoric that the Trump administration is going after hardened criminals gives the impression that the administration is focused on the general public safety, said Charis E. Kubrin, a professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine. “Are like 95% of these people arrested the worst of the worst? I don’t think so,” she said. “So the net keeps widening for who is being caught up in these practices and policies.”
Are undocumented immigrants responsible for higher crime rates? Here’s what studies show
San Franscisco Chronicle online
2025-10-23
Charis Kubrin, a criminologist at UC Irvine who has studied the relationship between immigration and crime for more than two decades, said the perception that immigrants increase crime has “been around as long as I’ve been doing research, and way longer than that.” “It’s sort of baked into the history of this country, where we often blame immigrants for our nation’s problems, crime being one of them,” she said.
L.A. on pace to see lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years as killings plummet
Los Angeles Times online
2025-07-09
Experts say the country may be in the midst of the sharpest decline in killings in history — one that can’t be attributed to any single factor. “What we’re seeing is a broader trend that goes over several years,” said Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine. “We’re seeing homicide rates go down all across the United States.”
After Trump immigration order, ICE ‘force multiplier’ agreements with Texas police surge
KXAN online
2025-05-12
“There are plenty of studies that show that the immigrants in the United States commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens,” [Professor Annie] Bright said. “That is pretty undisputed.” Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California Irvine, has studied that link and wrote about it in her 2023 book “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock.” … “The foundational assumption for the vast majority of these policies is that immigration and crime go hand in hand,” Kubrin said. “I’ve done the research myself and also have reviewed all of the research in the field, and that is an incorrect assumption. That is a flawed assumption.”
How spin and falsehoods propelled Trump's immigration crackdown in his first 100 days
Politifact online
2025-04-28
"People are like, ‘Crime is out of control.’ Well, actually, crime is not out of control right now, but the perception is that it's out of control," said Charis Kubrin, a University of California, Irvine criminology, law and society professor. "It's very easy to turn and blame immigrants, because those stereotypes have long existed and because it's sort of this natural in group, out group approach that people take." Kubrin said that Trump’s misleading claims about immigrants and crime have led to policies based on faulty assumptions that don’t exclusively target people with criminal convictions.
Opinion | Crime fighting efforts should start with Trump's buddies
The Washington Post online
2025-04-14
During last fall's presidential debate and in dozens of campaign stops, Donald Trump accused Joe Biden of releasing “millions” of criminals on America's citizens through his lax immigration policies. … The charge was, of course, absurd. While there were a handful of cases of criminals getting across the border, Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine, pointed out that "immigrants commit crime at a lower rate compared to their native born peers.”
Articles
Sanctuary Status and Crime in California: What’s the Connection?
Justice Evaluation Journal2020
In 2017, California officially became a sanctuary state following the passage of Senate Bill 54, which limits state and local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Following the passage of SB54, critics worried that crime rates would rise. What impact did this policy have on crime in California? The current study, the first of its kind, addresses this question.
Medical Marijuana Laws and Suicide
Archives of Suicide Research2019
In the current study we use a synthetic control group design to estimate the causal effect of a medical marijuana initiative on suicide risk. In 1996, California legalized marijuana use for medical purposes. Implementation was abrupt and uniform, presenting a “natural experiment.”
Institutional Completeness and Crime Rates in Immigrant Neighborhoods
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency2018
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.
Imagining violent criminals: an experimental investigation of music stereotypes and character judgments
Journal of Experimental Criminology2018
Using an experimental approach, participants were presented with music lyrics and asked to make judgments about the person who wrote the lyrics. All participants read the same lyrics but were told they were from a country, heavy metal, or rap song, depending upon the condition into which they were randomly assigned.
Can We Downsize Our Prisons and Jails Without Compromising Public Safety?
Criminology & Public Policy2018
Our study represents the first effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47’s (Prop 47’s) impact on California’s crime rates. With a state-level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2015, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California’s crime rates had Prop 47 not been enacted.
Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Contentious Issue
Annual Reviews2018
Are immigration and crime related? This review addresses this question in order to build a deeper understanding of the immigration-crime relationship. We synthesize the recent generation (1994 to 2014) of immigration-crime research focused on macrosocial (i.e., geospatial) units using a two-pronged approach that combines the qualitative method of narrative review with the quantitative strategy of systematic meta-analysis.
Suicide in Happy Places: Is There Really a Paradox?
Journal of Happiness Studies2017
In 2011 researchers published a paper that exposed a puzzling paradox: the happiest states in the U.S. also tend to have the highest suicide rates. In the current study, we re-examine this relationship by combining data from the Multiple Mortality Cause-of-Death Records, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and the American Communities Survey to determine how subjective well-being and suicide are related across 1563 U.S. counties.
The Threatening Nature of “Rap” Music
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law2016
Rap music has had a contentious relationship with the legal system, including censorship, regulation, and artists being arrested for lewd and profane performances. More recently, rap lyrics have been introduced by prosecutors to establish guilt in criminal trials. Some fear this form of artistic expression will be inappropriately interpreted as literal and threatening, perhaps because of stereotypes.
