aikyam school

Contemporaneous Crime Reduction in At-Risk Youth

Youth crime and delinquent contact with the criminal justice system frequently spike during summer months due to unstructured idle time when school is not in session. Providing structured employment during this window aims to mitigate criminal participation.

Picture this

Think of a teenager's summer schedule as a bucket of free time; if the bucket is empty, it easily fills up with risky behavior and bad decisions. Filling that bucket with a 25-hour-a-week job is like putting a lid on the bucket during the day, leaving no room or opportunity to get into trouble.

What the evidence says

SYEP participation decreases overall summer arrests by 17% and felony arrests by 23%. Among the at-risk subgroup, participation reduces summer arrests by 2.75 percentage points (a 23% drop, p < 0.10) and total arrests by 34 per 1,000 youth (a 24% drop). Convictions drop by 31% overall and 2.09 percentage points among at-risk youth (p < 0.01).

Who
N = 163,447 total applicants (5,092 at-risk youth with prior arrests, 158,355 low-risk youth aged 16+), New York City [1, 3].
How
Randomized controlled trial leveraging NYC Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) lotteries (2005–2008) linked to administrative criminal records from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, using Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) estimation [1, 3, 4].

What to do

1. Structure summer youth employment programs with randomized lotteries specifically targeted at youth with prior arrest records to achieve immediate summer crime reduction.

From the source

"Participation in SYEP decreases the chance that youth are arrested during the program summer by 17 percent and decreases the chance that they are arrested for a felony during the program summer by 23 percent."

The_Effects_of_Youth_Employment_Evidence_from_New_York_City_Summer.pdf

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