Criminality, Human Capital and Economic Performance

Criminality is any breach of the law likely to give rise to legal proceedings. It is determined by several factors namely (population density- unemployment-income- poverty and education). The objective of our work is to study criminality determinants on a sample of 51 American States over the period (2000-2013). Particular attention is paid to study the causal relationship between education (with its different measures) and criminality.In line with the approach to the economics of crime, this paper attempts to verify that urbanization, income inequality, unemployment, poverty and educational attainment significantly explain crime, on the one hand, and education is an investment activity that produces human capital, which is a fundamental factor of economic growth, job creation, wages and increased productivity of factors of production. Our results showed that the investment in human capital has a negative impact on crime in general. This effect is more considerable on crime against property. This leads us to define a crime deterrence policy through the implementation of structures able to help with installation of young people out of school and increase public spending on education.