aikyam school

Social Cost-Benefit Asymmetry in Youth Crime Prevention

Public employment programs carry substantial implementation costs ($1,403 per participant), making economic justification reliant on calculating monetized social externalities like averted crime. General population deployment yields negligible financial crime-reduction returns.

Picture this

Think of buying high-tech security guards for two different buildings: placing them in a bank prevents multi-million dollar robberies and pays for itself immediately, whereas placing them in an empty park saves virtually no money because no valuable crimes were going to happen there anyway.

What the evidence says

Preventing 34 arrests per 1,000 at-risk youth yields $652 to $1,250 in crime reduction savings per participant, directly offsetting 46.5% to 89.4% of total program cost ($1,403) during the summer alone. For low-risk youth, social savings from averted crime total only $2 to $3 per participant.

Who
N = 163,447 program applicants evaluated against offense-weighted social cost metrics ($19,000 bottom-up to $37,000 willingness-to-pay per arrest), New York City [3, 11].
How
Monetized external cost calculation applying Cohen & Piquero (2009) crime valuation models to 2SLS treatment effect estimates [11].

What to do

1. Incorporate subgroup-specific crime cost valuations into government cost-benefit models to justify targeted social program investments.

From the source

"Among at-risk youth, where the criminal justice effects of SYEP are concentrated, SYEP prevents 34 arrests per thousand youth in the program summer, generating savings estimates of $652,000 and $1.25 million savings per thousand youth, or around $652 and $1,250 per participant."

The_Effects_of_Youth_Employment_Evidence_from_New_York_City_Summer.pdf

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