This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on in-school violence using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland. Exploiting a dropout age reform in 2006, it defines a series of regression-discontinuity specifications. While police...

We investigate the short-term impact of out-of-home care on child health, schooling and juvenile crime. Using an event study to examine the dynamics around the time of placement, we document a clear deterioration of mental health and increasing crime rates before placement. After placement, we...

Youths represent a large fraction of the victims and perpetrators of violent crime across the world. Understanding how youths make judgments about crime and the actor(s) responsible has important implications, as patterns of blame attribution are associated with perceptions of criminal behavior...

We estimate the effect of losing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits at age 18 on criminal justice and employment outcomes over the next two decades. To estimate this effect, we use a regression discontinuity design in the likelihood of being reviewed for SSI eligibility at age 18...

We provide first evidence that temporal variations in the expected returns to crime affect the location of property crime. Our identification strategy relies on the widely-held perception in the UK that households of South Asian descent store gold jewellery at home. Price movements on the...

Many rights are conferred on Dutch youth at ages 16 and 18. Using national register data for all reported victimizations, we find sharp and discontinuous increases in victimization rates at these ages: about 13% for both genders at 16 and 9% (15%) for males (females) at 18. These results are...

Many rights are conferred on Dutch youth at ages 16 and 18. Using national register data for all reported victimizations, we find sharp and discontinuous increases in victimization rates at these ages: about 13% for both genders at 16 and 9% (15%) for males (females) at 18. These results are...

This paper analyses the effects of maternal school starting age and maternal age-at-birth on children's short and long-term outcomes using Finnish register data. We exploit a school-starting-age rule for identification. Mothers who are born after the school entry cut-off give birth at higher...

This paper presents a new theory of crime where leaders transmit a crime technology and act as a role model for other criminals. We show that, in equilibrium, an individual's crime effort and criminal decisions depend on the geodesic distance to the leader in his or her network of social...

Rule of law and access to justice are two of the fundamental requirements for the reduction of social differences as well as the development of a country. However, it is also recognised that if children are subjected to the same judicial mechanism as adults, they may stand victimized by the very...

Using a nationally-representative panel data set of U.S. high school students (AddHealth data) that contains a relatively large sample of siblings and twins, the paper investigates the impacts of gun availability at home and individual drug use on robbery, burglary, theft and damaging property...

Although there is a sizeable literature of the effect of private school attendance on academic student outcomes, there is a dearth of studies of the impact of school sector on non-academic outcomes. Using a rich data set, we analyze the impact of Catholic school attendance on the likelihood that...

Over the last two decades the punitiveness of the juvenile justice system has declined" substantially relative to the adult courts. During that same time period juvenile violent crime" rates have grown almost twice as quickly as adult crime rates. This paper examines the degree to" which those...

This paper shows that participation in crime and involvement with the criminal justice system has reached extraordinary levels among young men. With approximately 2 percent as many men incarcerated as in the labor force, the crime rate should have plummeted. It didn't. Evidence suggests that the...

This paper examines the short-term effect of school on juvenile crime. To do so, we bring together daily measures of criminal activity and detailed school calendar information from 29 jurisdictions across the country, and use the plausibly exogenous variation generated by teacher in-service days...

Youth crime is widespread. To study the effect of market wages on youth crime, I analyze a time-allocation model in which consumers face parametric wages and diminishing marginal returns to crime. Under these assumptions, an individual who works will commit crime if the returns to the first hour...

Using a nationally-representative panel data set of U.S. high school students (AddHealth data) that contains a relatively large sample of siblings and twins, the paper investigates the impacts of gun availability at home and individual drug use on robbery, burglary, theft and damaging property...

This is the first paper to test the economic model of crime for juveniles using micro data. It uses a nationally representative sample of 16,478 high school children surveyed in 1995. The sample includes not only detailed information on offenses, but also data on personal, family and...

A standard methodology in program evaluation is to use time series variation to compare pre- and post-program outcomes. However, when the timing of a break in a statistical relationship can be determined only by looking at the data, then the usual distribution of the test statistic which assumes...

In this paper, we estimate the general deterrent effect of criminal justice resources on criminal behavior. Our panel data, which combine individual-level information on arrests and personal characteristics with aggregate measures of criminal justice resources, allow us to obtain deterrence...

Compulsory schooling laws (CSL) are often advocated for fighting crime. While this has generally worked for the US/Europe, it may not necessarily be the case. Exploiting the large exogenous variation in compulsory high schooling of 15-17 year olds introduced by the 2009 Brazilian Constitutional...

A common practice in the fields of education, mental health, and juvenile justice is to segregate problem youths in groups with deviant peers. Assignments of this sort, which concentrate deviant youths, may facilitate deviant peer influence and lead to perverse outcomes. This possibility adds to...

In this Essay, I focus on abolition of the juvenile justice system, including the virtual elimination of incarceration; the dismantling of the existing juvenile justice (or injustice) system; breaking the school to prison pipeline and the criminalization of school discipline; creating social...

In this paper we explore the relationship between crime and work using data for a cohort sample of young men. We find that working and going to school significantly decrease the probability of committing criminal acts and by virtually identical amounts. Parochial school education and higher IQ...

The #MeToo movement has brought much needed attention to the widespread and systemic nature of sexual harm. However, the broad, uncritical push to connect “#MeToo” to criminal prosecution has real downsides, revealing the pathologies and ineffectiveness of the criminal system and...

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities. We use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by MTO to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency. The offer to relocate...

We study the interplay between parental and peer socialization in shaping criminal behavior among adolescents. We develop a simple cultural transmission model where parents affect how the society influences their children’s decision. The model predicts that parental and peer socialization are...

Dating violence is a serious public health concern both per se and because victimization in the young adult years can be a precursor to more severe incidents of domestic violence later, in the context of cohabitation or marriage. To date, no quantitative studies have examined dating violence...

This article documents the long-term relationship among juvenile conviction, occupation choices, employment, wages, and recidivism. Using data from NLSY97, we document that youths who are convicted at or before age 17 have lower full-time employment rate and lower wage growth rate even after 10...

We study the interplay between parental and peer socialization in shaping criminal behavior among adolescents. We develop a simple cultural transmission model where parents affect how society influences their children's decisions. The model predicts that parental and peer socialization are...

A number of researchers point to the anticipation of early death, or a sense of "futurelessness," as a contributing factor to youth crime and violence. Young people who perceive a high probability of early death, it is argued, may have little reason to delay gratification for the promise of...

We evaluate the deterrence effects of the age of criminal responsibility on total drug trafficking and homicide crimes per age, based on a quasi-experiment generated by differences in punishment severity for these crimes prescribed by the Statute of the Child and Adolescent and by the Penal Code...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of mental health and substance abuse treatment in reducing crimes committed by juveniles. The observed high correlations between crime, substance abuse and poor mental health suggests that factors which reduce substance abuse and improve...

We examine if compulsory schooling laws (CSL) necessarily lower crimes. We focus on violent youth crime (homicides by assault and guns) among 15-19 years age group in all Brazilian municipalities over 2000-13, taking advantage of the 2009 Brazilian Constitutional Amendment that required...

Although there exists a large literature analyzing whether an individual's peers have an impact on that individual's own behavior and subsequent outcomes, there is paucity of research on whether peers influence a person's decisions and judgments regarding a third party. We investigate whether...

We study the interplay between parental and peer socialization in shaping criminal behavior among adolescents. We develop a simple cultural transmission model where parents affect how society influences their children's decisions. The model predicts that parental and peer socialization are...

Several states initiated school finance reform during the post-1990s, commonly named the “adequacy” era, with the primary purpose of providing adequate funding for low-income school districts. This paper uses the space-time variation in court-ordered reforms in this period as a shock to...

We examine if compulsory schooling laws (CSL) necessarily lower crimes. We focus on violent youth crime (homicides by assault and guns) among 15-19 years age group in all Brazilian municipalities over 2000-13, taking advantage of the 2009 Brazilian Constitutional Amendment that required...