School's out… forever: A study of juvenile crime, at-risk youths and teacher strikes

The goal of this paper is to better understand the implications of forcing children to be in school, in terms of juvenile criminal activity. By combining a unique measure of unexpected school closings (using teacher strikes) with highly detailed criminal data, I show: (1) that incapacitation deters property crime and leads to increased violent crime to degrees that are potentially much larger than previously estimated, (2) that highly urban school districts are the most affected by incapacitation, (3) that juveniles with differing criminal histories are differentially impacted by incapacitation. I also confirm that these changes in crime rates reflect a change in overall crime and not a displacement of existing crime.