Better Schools, Less Crime?

By David J. Deming. 2011

387 citations recorded by the source corpus.

I estimate the impact of attending a first-choice middle or high school on adult crime, using data from public school choice lotteries in Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district (CMS). Seven years after random assignment, lottery winners had been arrested for fewer serious crimes and had spent fewer days incarcerated. The gain in school quality as measured by peer and teacher inputs was equivalent to moving from one of the lowest-ranked schools to one at the district average. The reduction in crime comes largely from years after enrollment in the preferred school is complete. The impacts are concentrated among high-risk youth, who commit about 50% less crime across several different outcome measures and scalings of crime by severity. I find suggestive evidence that school quality explains more of the impact in high school, whereas peer effects are more important in middle school. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7a858e1bac946dc885a710b14db878ba0ce63a48

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Citations in the corpus

Non-Cognitive Ability, Test Scores, and Teacher Quality: Evidence from 9th Grade Teachers in North Carolina (2012, neutral): “…on test scores have meaningful effects on long-term outcomes, such as educational attainment, earnings, and crime (Booker et al. 2011; Deming, 2009; Deming, 2011).2 This suggests that schooling produces both cognitive skills (measured by standardized tests) and non-cognitive skills (reflected in…”
Does Growing Up in a High Crime Neighborhood Affect Youth Criminal Behavior (2014, background): “…behavior, Carrell and Hoekstra (2010) who find that children from troubled families decrease their peers’ test score outcomes and increase misbehavior, and Deming (2011) who shows that peer effects are one explanation for a gain in school quality leading to a significant reduction in crime.”
Non-Production Benefits of Education: Crime, Health, and Good Citizenship (2011, background): “…about preschool or Head Start enrollment.39 Garces, Thomas, and Currie (2002) use data from the PSID, examining adult outcomes for individuals born between 1964 and 1977, while Deming (2009b) uses data from the CNLSY and examines outcomes for individuals born in the late 1970s and early 1980s.”
The effect of school closings on student achievement (2014, neutral): “(2005), Abdulkadiro ğ lu et al. (2011) and Deming (2011).”
The Medium-Term Impacts of High-Achieving Charter Schools (2015, neutral): “A large literature suggests that outcomes are heavily influenced by one’s peers ðSacerdote 2001; Fergusson, Swain-Campbell, and Horwood 2002; Boisjoly et al. 2006; Carrell, Fullerton, and West 2009; Deming 2011Þ.”
School Crime Control and Prevention (2010, methodology): “Similarly, Deming (2009) analyzed data from a public school choice lottery in the CharlotteMecklenburg, North Carolina, school district.”
Rethinking the Benefits of Youth Employment Programs: The Heterogeneous Effects of Summer Jobs (2017, neutral): “Program effects that go in opposite directions for violent and property crime are fairly common in the literature (Kling, Ludwig, & Katz, 2005; Deming, 2011; Jacob & Lefgren, 2003); in fact, a short-term violence decline followed by a longer-term property crime increase is notably similar to the…”
Spillovers from Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: Bolsa Família and Crime in Urban Brazil (2016, background): “…behavior through wages and preferences (discount rates and risk aversion), and, therefore, through the relative attractiveness of criminal activities and the cost of expected punishment (Becker and Mulligan, 1997, Lochner and Moretti, 2004, Lochner, 2010, Machin et al, 2010, and Deming, 2011).”
What Do Test Scores Miss? The Importance of Teacher Effects on Non–Test Score Outcomes (2018, positive): “Consistent with this, some interventions that have no effect on test scores have meaningful effects on long-term outcomes (Deming 2009, 2011; Booker et al. 2011), and improved noncognitive skills explain the effect of some interventions (Fredriksson, Ockert, and Osterbeek 2013; Heckman, Pinto, and…”
Preventing Youth Violence and Dropout: A Randomized Field Experiment (2013, neutral): “Because intervention impacts often vary greatly by crime type (Deming 2011; Evans & Owens 2007; Kling, Ludwig & Katz 2005; Lochner & Moretti 2004; Weiner, Lutz & Ludwig 2009), as do social costs, we examine arrests separately for four different offense categories: violent, property, drug, and "…”