Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
Category: Student Well-Being
Efforts to reduce school-based arrest may reshape policing beyond school doors, yet their downstream effects are largely unknown. We study a New York City policy that encouraged informal diversion in place of arrest, using a difference-in-differences strategy. The probability of a juvenile crime record near a school fell by 6.9 percentage points---concentrated among misdemeanor offenses and female students--- likely independent of declines in school-based arrests. Yet, diversion increased by approximately 5 times more than arrests fell, consistent with net-widening. Within schools, suspensions increased despite unchanged behavior, suggesting schools substituted internal discipline for arrest. Attendance gains and test-score declines are suggestive.
Keywords
discipline, juvenile justice, education policy, police in schools
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/d2qa-5640
