Several professors at the University of Texas at El Paso received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the relationship between neighborhood immigration and crime.

The professors suggest that higher levels of neighborhood immigration mean less crime for homicide, according to a large body of research.

"In particular, regions with a high percentage of immigrants have lower crime rates," said Maria C. Morales, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology. "This is the case in El Paso, as it has been ranked among the safest cities in the U.S. for several years now. Our study will advance our knowledge on the association with immigrant neighborhoods and low crime that is important for both the social sciences and policymakers."

The project, titled "Why are Immigrant Neighborhoods Low Crime Neighborhoods? Testing Immigrant Revitalization Theory and Cultural Explanations," aims to determine whether immigration reduces other types of crime and to find out why crime may be lowered in immigrant neighborhoods.

"This investigation is designed to explain what social, psychological and cultural factors protect immigrants and their neighborhoods from crime. We expect the results to inform policymakers, social scientists and the public in general," said Harmon M. Hosch, Ph.D., assistant director of UTEP's Center for Law and Human Behavior.

Morales, Hosch and Theodore R. Curry, Ph.D., associate professor in sociology and anthropology; retired Helen M. C. and J. Edward Stern Professor of Psychology, received $124,998 from the NSF to cover the project for about two years.

"We will gather data from El Paso neighborhoods in spring 2014 using trained student-researchers from UTEP and begin analyzing the results that summer," Curry said. "The results will inject an important array of facts into the highly politicized debate over immigration, which hopefully can be used to inform policy decisions as well as the public."