Investigating the effects of furloughing public school teachers on juvenile crime in Hawaii

Policymakers have long been concerned about the large social costs of juvenile crime. Detecting the causes of juvenile crime is an important educational policy concern as many of these crimes happen during the school day. In the 2009-10 school year, the State of Hawaii responded to fiscal strains by furloughing all school teachers employed by the Department of Education and canceling classes for seventeen instructional days. We examine the effects of these non-holiday school closure days to draw conclusions about the relationship between time in school and juvenile arrests in the State of Hawaii on the island of Oahu. We calculate marginal effects from a negative binomial model and find that time off from school is associated with significantly fewer juvenile assault and drug-related arrests, although there are no changes in other types of crimes, such as burglaries. The declines in arrests for assaults are the most pronounced in poorer regions of the island while the decline in drug-related arrests is larger in the relatively more prosperous regions.