What would you think if someone told you that the Hispanic incarceration rate in state prisons, when adjusted for age, is only slightly higher than that of whites? It certainly runs against the common wisdom voiced daily by radio and television hosts railing against the hordes of illegal immigrants descending upon America.

In the March print edition of The American Conservative, Ron Unz runs the numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on state prisons, where nearly all violent criminals serve sentences for rape, murder, robbery and other such felonies. Unz consulted BJS numbers from 2005, which included better state breakdowns than the more recent numbers, and which also looked at a period of time when Hispanic incarceration rates were slightly higher than they are today.