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This paper estimates the causal effect of repeated exposure to violent crime on test scores in New York City. We use two empirical strategies; value-added models linking student performance on standardised exams to violent crimes on students’ residential block, and a regression discontinuity approach that identifies the acute effect of additional crime exposure within a one-week window. Exposure to violent crime reduces academic performance. Value-added models suggest the average effect is very small (approximately −0.01 standard deviations) but grows with repeated exposure. Regression discontinuity (RD) models also find a larger effect among children previously exposed. The marginal acute effect is as large as −0.04 standard deviations for students with two or more prior exposures. Among these, it is almost one tenth of a standard deviation for Black students. We provide credible causal evidence that repeated exposure to neighbourhood violence harms test scores, and this negative effect increases with exposure.

Criminal activity may influence the decisions of existing property owners or prospective investors to invest in a property, given the potential elevated expenses and increased uncertainty that often accompany crime. This study investigates the relationship between crime and private investment at nearby micro-places using location-specific crime incident and building permit data from 2008 to 2018 in the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Seattle. Data were aggregated to the blockface-level to examine how changes in investment on a blockface are influenced by changes in crime on that blockface and adjacent blockfaces in the subsequent year. Results indicate that an increase in total crime on a blockface was associated with a significant decrease in building permit activity the following year in all six cities, but the relationship is less strong when aggregating crime from adjacent blockfaces. When looking at spillover effects, higher crime on adjacent blockfaces was significantly associated with lower levels of investment beyond the effect of the crime trend on that blockface in Los Angeles and San Antonio. Though the relationship between adjacent blockface crime and investment was negative across the other four cities, it was not statistically significant. Taken together, these findings suggest that effective targeted crime prevention policies may have the added benefit of spurring local economic investment and that the impact of crime is very localised.

Probation plays a central role in the juvenile justice system, and probation officers are often involved in numerous decisions made in juvenile courts. This study examines the views of probation staff from 23 jurisdictions, some of which participated in an Annie E. Casey Foundation–funded juvenile justice reform effort intended to safely and significantly reduce the use of out-of-home placements, especially for youth of color. We survey juvenile probation staff members at two waves and describe changes in reported practices and principles relating to individualized case planning, youth engagement, family and community engagement, and racial and ethnic equity and inclusion as well as beliefs about the purposes of out-of-home placement. Reform sites reported slightly more frequent use of practices and principles addressing community engagement and racial and ethnic equity and inclusion in the second wave than in the first wave.

Does school climate ameliorate or exacerbate the impact of neighborhood violent crime on test scores? Using administrative data from the New York City Department of Education and the New York City Police Department, we find that exposure to violence in the residential neighborhood and an unsafe climate at school lead to substantial test score losses in English language arts (ELA). Middle school students exposed to neighborhood violent crime before the ELA exam who attend schools perceived to be less safe or to have a weak sense of community score 0.06 and 0.03 standard deviations lower, respectively. We find the largest negative effects for boys and Hispanic students in the least safe schools, and no effect of neighborhood crime for students attending schools with better climates.

States and districts are revising discipline policies to reduce out-of-school suspensions (OSSs), but the consequences of these reforms are largely unknown. We examine a reform in Philadelphia that...

The question of how best to improve neighborhoods that lag behind has drawn considerable attention from policy-makers, practitioners, and academics, yet there remains a vigorous debate regarding the best approaches to accomplish community development. This paper investigates the role crime policy plays in shaping the trajectory of neighborhoods. Much of the existing research on neighborhood crime was conducted in rising-crime environments, and the evidence was clear: high levels of crime have adverse effects on neighborhoods and resident quality of life. This study examines how private investment in neighborhoods in two cities – Chicago and Los Angeles – changed as the incidence of neighborhood crime changed during the 2000s, a period when crime was declining city-wide in both places. Using detailed blockface-level data on the location of crime and private investments between 2006 and 2011, the analysis answers the question: Do changes in crime affect private development decisions? The results show that private investment, as represented by building permits, decreases on blocks where crime increases in the past year. We also find that the relationship between crime and private investment is not symmetric – private investment appears to only be sensitive to crime in rising crime contexts. The result is present in both cities, and robust to multiple definitions of crime and the elimination of outliers and the main commercial district. These results suggest that crime-reduction policies can be an effective economic development tool, but only in certain neighborhoods facing specific circumstances.

Discipline reformers claim that suspensions negatively affect suspended students, while others suggest reforms have unintended consequences for peers. Using student panel data from the School District of Philadelphia, we implement student fixed effects and instrumental variable (IV) strategies to examine the consequences of suspensions for offending students and their peers. A suspension decreases math and reading achievement for suspended students. The effects are robust to IV estimates leveraging a district-wide policy change in suspension use. Suspensions are more salient for students who personally experience suspension than for their peers. Exposure to suspensions for more serious misconduct has very small, negative spillovers onto peer achievement, but does not change peer absences.

Beginning in the early 1990s, states and districts enacted zero-tolerance discipline policies that relied heavily on out-of-school suspensions. Recently, districts nationwide have revised these pol...

A safe environment is a prerequisite for productive learning. Using a unique panel data set of survey responses from New York City middle school students, the article provides insight into the relationship between feelings of safety in the classroom and academic achievement. The survey data include the reported feelings of safety for more than 340,000 students annually from 2007 to 2010 in more than 700 middle schools. Findings show a consistent negative relationship between feeling unsafe in the classroom and test scores. The study provides insight into the mechanisms through which feeling unsafe in the classroom relates to test scores and presents multiple robustness checks to support the central finding.

An incident of extreme violence, such as a homicide, disrupts daily life not only through the incident itself but also through the chaos and disruption that emerge in the aftermath of violence. This article presents descriptive evidence about how communities are affected by increased police activity--specifically, stop, question, and frisk (SQF) activity--following an incident of extreme violence. Our results show that SQF activity in a block group increases in the week following a homicide in New York City, with the largest increases in neighborhoods with high crime rates. Furthermore, neighborhoods with different racial and ethnic compositions have differential levels of average SQF activity and also experience differential responses from the police in the aftermath of a homicide. African American residents have a higher probability of being stopped following a homicide than do nonblack residents across neighborhoods of all types. Language: en

Objectives: The main objectives of the study are to estimate the impact of mortgage foreclosures on the location of criminal activity within a blockface. Drawing on routine activity theory, disorder theory, and social disorganization theory, the study explores potential mechanisms that link foreclosures to crime. Methods: To estimate the relationship between foreclosures and localized crime, we use detailed foreclosure and crime data at the blockface level in Chicago and a difference-in-difference estimation strategy. Results: Overall, mortgage foreclosures increase crime on blockfaces. Foreclosures have a larger impact on crime that occurs inside residences than on crime in the street. The impact of foreclosures on crime location varies by crime type (violent, property, and public order crime). Conclusions: The evidence supports the three main theoretical mechanisms that link foreclosure activity to local crime. The investigation of the relationship by crime location suggests that foreclosures change the relative attractiveness of indoor and outdoor locations for crime commission on the blockface.

School safety is a critical issue for school staff, policy makers, and parents. Efforts to promote safety often focus on reducing school violence and disorder, including zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, metal detectors, and police officers in schools. Yet little is known about how safe students feel at school and how safety varies within schools. Using survey data for the population of middle school students in a large urban school district, this article identifies gaps in feelings of safety between Black students, Hispanic students, and their White and Asian peers. Key characteristics of schools and neighborhoods that relate to safety gaps are identified.

The mortgage foreclosure crisis has generated increasing concerns about the effects of foreclosed properties on their surrounding neighborhoods, and on criminal activity in particular. There are a number of potential ways in which a foreclosed property might increase the payoffs to committing crime and decrease the likelihood of being caught, including reduced maintenance, residential turnover, and vacancy. Using point-specific, longitudinal crime, foreclosure, and other property data from New York City, this paper determines whether foreclosed properties affect criminal activity on the surrounding blockface – an individual street segment including properties on both sides of the street. We find that additional foreclosures on a blockface lead to additional total crimes, violent crimes and public order crimes. These effects appear to be largest when foreclosure activity is measured by the number of foreclosed properties that are on their way to an auction or have reverted to bank ownership. We find that effects are largest in neighborhoods with moderate or high levels of crime, and on blockfaces with concentrated foreclosure activity.

What are the differences in outcomes among youth organizing and other efforts to involve young people at the community level? This paper examines differences in developmental outcomes among youth o...

In the wake of the housing crisis there is growing concern that increased mortgage foreclosures may lead to physical deterioration of buildings and increased vacancy rates in neighborhoods, undermining neighborhood social controls, and causing increases in local crime. While some recent research suggests that increased mortgage foreclosures in micro-neighborhoods cause modest increases in crime (Ellen, Lacoe, and Sharygin, 2013; Cui, 2010), this paper considers whether foreclosures lead to increased crime on a block, as well as the mechanisms through which foreclosures affect neighborhood crime. To shed light on mechanisms, we investigate whether and how foreclosures shift the location and type of criminal activity by changing the relative attractiveness to potential offenders of one location versus another. For instance, the presence of a vacant, foreclosed building may make it more likely that a drug dealer will sell drugs in a building rather than on the street. As a result, crime occurring inside residences (and in vacant buildings in particular) and on the street may increase by different magnitudes. In addition, we consider whether foreclosures affect resident reports of disorder. Using richly detailed foreclosure, 311, and crime data geo-coded to the blockface (a street segment in-between the two closest cross-streets), we estimate the impact of foreclosures on the location of crime within blockfaces.This research focuses on Chicago, Illinois. Like many areas of the country, housing prices in Chicago reached a peak in 2006, and declined through 2011. In September 2011, 8.7 percent of the mortgages in the Chicago metropolitan area were in foreclosure, giving Chicago the 11th highest foreclosure rate among the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country. Recent media reports claim that foreclosed and abandoned buildings in Chicago attract criminal activity including gang activity, drug use, and burglaries, in addition to graffiti, and theft of copper pipes and radiators (Knight and O’Shea, 2011). This study takes an empirical look at how foreclosures have changed patterns of crime in Chicago.

School safety is a critical issue for school staff and administrators, policymakers, and parents across the nation. Media coverage of school shootings, gang violence, and bullying at school and online highlight the increasing need to understand how safe students feel at school, and how school safety affects student outcomes. Policy efforts to promote safety often focus on reducing school violence and disorder, such as zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, the installation of metal detectors, or stationing police officers in schools. These policies are increasingly topics of discussion in academic, policy, and legal circles. For instance, a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union in 2010 challenged the practices of police officers stationed in New York City public schools and the City Council took up the issue of racial disparities in school disciplinary outcomes in the same year. However, the influence of these policies on student perceptions of safety and security is less often a focus of the debate.Most research on educational context focuses on how school and neighborhood environments affect student outcomes. There has been less of a focus in the literature on whether students respond to the same school environment differently, and if these differences are systematically related to student characteristics such as race or poverty. Understanding variation in student responses to school and neighborhood settings is critical for crafting effective education policy and addressing persistent gaps in achievement.

Persistent racial and ethnic gaps in educational achievement have focused policy attention on school climate and safety as important elements of educational performance. In a special issue of Educational Researcher focused on safety and order in schools, Cornell and Mayer (2010) argue that school safety and school order are fundamental to studies of the achievement gap, teacher attrition, and student engagement. This paper represents the first large-scale analysis of how feelings of safety at school affect educational outcomes. If student safety affects achievement there may be educational benefits of policies aimed at improving safety and order in schools and classrooms. Academic attainment is a critical step toward future success in adult life, increasing employment and earnings and the probability of other stabilizing life events such as marriage. Studies show that early childhood test scores are positively correlated with future labor market outcomes (Currie & Thomas, 1999). Yet, black and Hispanic students consistently underperform on standardized tests compared to white and Asian students (U.S. Department of Education, 2004, 2008). These racial gaps persist even as test scores have risen for all students. Gaps in achievement extend to college enrollment and completion rates and as a result, whites are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor's degree as blacks (Western, 2006). Educational gaps translate into differences in wealth accumulation over the life-course, differing rates of marriage (Schneider, 2011), and disparities in future health outcomes (Freudenberg & Ruglis, 2007; Fiscella & Kitzman, 2009). Lower educational attainment is associated with an increased probability of arrest and incarceration: the risk of imprisonment is five times greater for black men with no college degree compared to white men with the same level of education (Lochner & Moretti, 2004; Western, 2006). Identifying the factors that contribute to these gaps is critical to narrowing disparities in later-life outcomes