School and Crime

September 2024

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

K-12 Education

Topics

Student Well-Being