Medium-Term Criminal Justice Impact Fade-Out
Short-term youth employment interventions frequently achieve immediate behavioral reductions, but evaluating whether these gains persist as long-term structural changes over subsequent years remains a key challenge for social policy.
Picture this
Think of placing a temporary speed bump on a residential street during the summer; while drivers slow down while passing over it, once the speed bump is removed, vehicle speeds gradually return to their previous baseline over the following years unless permanent road changes are constructed.
What the evidence says
Post-program arrest and conviction effects up to five years show no statistically significant impacts for either group. Among at-risk youth, felony arrest reductions show a persistent directional decrease of roughly 10% (-2.60 percentage points at 1 year, -4.51 at 3 years [p < 0.10], -2.81 at 5 years), while low-risk youth yield precisely estimated zeroes (+0.175 percentage points at 5 years, p > 0.10).
- Who
- N = 163,447 youth (5,092 at-risk youth with prior arrests, 158,355 low-risk youth aged 16+), New York City.
- How
- Longitudinal Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) instrumental variable tracking across 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year post-program windows (excluding summer treatment months).
What to do
1. Supplement short-term summer jobs programs with multi-year continuous supportive programming to sustain long-term crime reduction outcomes.
From the source
"Looking up to five years after the program summer, we do not find a statistically significant impact of the program for either the at-risk youth or the low-risk youth."
The_Effects_of_Youth_Employment_Evidence_from_New_York_City_Summer.pdf