In Simple Words
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.
Chicago youth who would take a summer job
- Without OSC+
- Estimated comparison outcome
- With OSC+
- 6.4 fewer violent arrests per 100 youth
OSC+ participation reduced violent arrests within one year, with most decline after the program. Social-emotional learning was not isolated as the causal component. One-year participant effect; 35% relative reduction. Most decline followed summer. Learning mechanism not separately established.
See source →Research question
Youth are twice as likely as adults to commit and suffer from violent acts, which claim over 150 lives daily in the United States. Traditional youth crime interventions rely heavily on costly incarceration or expensive programming that fails to achieve cost-effective long-term behavioral changes.
Participants
5,216 young men ages 16–22 in Chicago (2013 cohort) and disadvantaged youth in the 2012 cohort (over 90% received free or reduced-price lunch, nearly all Black, 20–47% previously arrested, residing in neighborhoods with ~20% unemployment and 33% household poverty).
Study Design
Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) assigning applicants via lottery to treatment (part-time minimum-wage job with or without social-emotional learning curriculum) or control groups, matching administrative records across police, school, and labor databases.
Results
Participation in One Summer Chicago Plus (OSC+) reduced violent crime arrests one year after random assignment by 6.4 arrests per 100 youth from a baseline of 18.3 arrests per 100 youth (a 35% reduction), with the bulk of the decline occurring after the program ended. OSC+ increased property crime arrests over two years by 5.8 per 100 youth from a baseline of 12.7 (a 45% increase). Estimated social benefits from violence reduction were nearly six times larger than program costs.
Takeaway
Deploy subsidized minimum-wage summer employment programs for high-risk youth that incorporate workplace-based social-emotional skill practice to reduce post-program violent behavior.
Source and citation
See source →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.
- 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 →