The data analyzed provide information on the principal organizational characteristics of these groups as well as qualitative changes and continuities in criminal styles. The criminal records examined not only contain verdicts but also frequently include reports of interrogations, thus providing information about all sorts of defendants, their way of life, and their illegal activities. The issues examined in this study are patterns of immigration and the criminal activities of the immigrant ethnic groups of gypsies and Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Gypsies were not involved in serious crime until panic measures by Dutch authorities in response to the increasing number of gypsy immigrants triggered an increasingly violent chain reaction, which may have led to the demise of internal social control in gypsy society. In the case of the Jews, it was primarily the policy of segregation practiced by the Dutch authorities that caused established Jews to dissociate themselves from those newcomers who might be considered disreputable. If any lessons can be drawn from the past, they are that not immigration itself, but the exclusion and stigmatization of certain immigrant (ethnic or non-ethnic) groups is conducive to crime. Any long- term policy with respect to immigrants and crime should address means of integration besides means of control. A longitudinal analysis is needed to examine why some immigrants are successfully integrated into a new society while others are not and why some poor immigrants turn to crime while others do not. 10 footnotes