Immigrant Protective Policies in Criminal Justice

Eagly argues that protective gaps for immigrants in local criminal justice policies have evolved against a backdrop of an incomplete set of organizing principles for advancing such policies. The justifications most often put forth by advocates, scholars, and policymakers in favor of protective criminal justice policies are community policing, immigrant integration, and budgetary constraints. Each of these justifications, while important, has supplied only a partial framework for formulating criminal justice policy that decouples local policing and prosecuting from federal immigration enforcement priorities. To help guide the development of next-generation protective policies, Eagly explores an alternative justification for immigrant protective policies—immigrant equality, which seeks to insulate noncitizens from harsher forms of punishment, racial and ethnic profiling, and other substantive and procedural distortions that immigration enforcement imposes on criminal cases involving noncitizens. To illustrate how adherence to a norm of immigrant equality would further refine and shape next-generation protective policies, Eagly applies the approach to current criminal justice issues facing localities around the country.