Prior Criminal Risk Heterogeneity in Youth Employment Outcomes
Universal social interventions often display muted aggregate impacts because low-risk individuals have minimal baseline rates of negative outcomes. Assessing overall averages obscures massive behavioral shifts occurring within high-risk subgroups.
Picture this
Imagine throwing life jackets into a swimming pool where most people are standing in knee-deep water and only a few are in the deep end. The life jackets do nothing for those in shallow water because they were never at risk of drowning, but they save the lives of the few swimming in deep waters.
What the evidence says
Low-risk youth (97% of the cohort) show precisely estimated zero effects for contemporaneous crime reduction, ruling out arrest decreases greater than 0.9 per 1,000 youth. Virtually all statistically significant reductions in summer arrests and convictions are concentrated in the 3% at-risk population.
- Who
- N = 163,447 youth (5,092 at-risk youth with prior arrests, 158,355 low-risk youth without prior arrests), New York City [1, 3, 8].
- How
- Subgroup-stratified 2SLS instrumental variables analysis of randomized lottery winners versus losers across four program years (2005–2008) [3, 4, 7].
What to do
1. Allocate program slots and recruitment outreach preferentially to individuals with prior criminal justice contact rather than relying on broad universal lotteries.
From the source
"Our large sample allows us to estimate a rather precise zero on the contemporaneous effect arising for the 97 percent of SYEP participants without a prior arrest."
The_Effects_of_Youth_Employment_Evidence_from_New_York_City_Summer.pdf
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