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School and Crime

Criminal activity is seasonal, peaking in the summer and declining through the winter. We provide the first evidence that arrests of children and reported crimes involving children follow a different pattern: peaking during the school year and declining in the summer. We use a regression discontinuity design surrounding school start dates and an excess crime calculation to show that the school environment increases reported crimes involving children by roughly 50% annually. School exacerbates preexisting inequality in criminal interactions, increasing the Black-white and male-female gaps in reported juvenile crime and arrest rates by more than 40%.

Keywords
Crime, regression discontinuity, school calendar
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/kht2-zj90

EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:

Jones, Todd R., and Ezra Karger. (). School and Crime. (EdWorkingPaper: 23-865). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/kht2-zj90

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