Contemporaneous Crime Reduction in At-Risk Youth

In Simple Words

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.

Research question

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.

Participants

N = 163,447 total applicants (5,092 at-risk youth with prior arrests, 158,355 low-risk youth aged 16+), New York City.

Study Design

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.

Results

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).

Takeaway

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

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Percentage points

The difference between two percentages.

ExampleA rise from 40% to 50% is 10 percentage points. Relative to the starting value, that is a 25% increase.

Office for National Statistics · Percentages ↗Read more about percentage points →

Randomized controlled trial

A study that uses chance, like drawing lots, to decide who receives each option being compared. Researchers compare the groups’ outcomes to estimate the effect of those options.

ExampleA lottery assigns volunteers to a training programme or a comparison group. Researchers then compare their outcomes.

GET-IT glossary · Randomized study ↗Read more about randomized controlled trial →

Related findings

• Contemporaneous Incapacitation via Program Hours Allocation →Crime & justice

  Imagine a youth's peak hours for getting into trouble are weekday afternoons. Assigning them to a job requiring 25 structured hours per week physically occupies those peak hours, leaving insufficient time and opportunity to engage in illegal activities during the program duration.

• Post-Program Violence Reduction via Workplace Social-Emotional Learning →Crime & justice

  When youth participate in summer employment, they practice self-control, social information processing, and decision-making in real-time workplace settings, akin to practicing flight maneuvers in a flight simulator rather than reading a textbook. This emotional recalibration persists after the job ends, steering individuals away from high-risk interpersonal conflict during critical periods of elevated risk.

• Youth Employment Program Incarceration and Mortality Mitigation →Crime & justice

  Providing structured entry-level work and baseline earnings during crucial adolescent development years acts like installing a safety net under a tightrope walker, preventing catastrophic falls into severe criminal justice involvement or fatal physical violence.

• Post-Program Behavioral Persistence vs. Incapacitation →Crime & justice

  If a program only works by keeping someone busy, bad choices return immediately when the supervisor leaves; but if the experience teaches internal emotional steering, the person continues making safer choices even after walking away from the structured environment.