Education & crime

Mayor Carcetti might be right. In The Wire, he’s cutting police spending in order to protect the education budget. This might make sense even in terms of reducing crime, at least in the long run*. This new paper estimates that increasing high school enrolment is a more cost-effective way to reduce crime than longer prison sentences.
This is because longer prison sentences have little deterrent effect, whereas more educated people are less likely to turn to crime; in the US crime rates are fives times as high among high school drop-outs as among high school graduates.
This is not the only way in which education might cut crime. Another way is simply that if kids are in school they are not burgling houses; when schools close for teacher training, property crime rises (but violent crime falls).
Also, a paper in the latest Economic Journal (early version here) shows that raising the school leaving age reduces the chances of teenage girls becoming pregnant; the “incarceration effect” (girls don’t want to get pregnant whilst still at school) outweighs the bike shed effect. If teenage parents are more likely to raise criminals than older parents, this could reduce crime in the very long run.
You might read this as an argument for raising the school leaving age to 18. However, a more liberal alternative is to pay low-income students to stay on at school, as educational maintenance allowances do.
Strangely, though, the Tories have been opposed to these.
It couldn’t be that bashing the poor is a higher priority than genuinely cutting crime, could it?
* I dunno if this proves true in Baltimore; we've only seen ep 1 of series 5 here in England.

Comments

[Recusant]

"It couldn’t be that bashing the poor is a higher priority than genuinely cutting crime, could it?"

NO.

[stefan]

Do we know anything about the selection problems with educational maintenance allowances? I'd suspect that educational maintenance allowances would be taken up exactly by the kids that aren't going to engage in criminal activity in any case, while mandatory school attendance, if enforced, would be binding on kids likely to engage in crime.

[passer by]

And whats the violent crime rate in baltimore anyway? I suppose it depends on the level of tolersble crime.

Would not the better solution be to pay the poor not to have children?

[Bob B]

The really curious issue is about why the drop-out rate from all training and education is higher in Britain than in almost all other OECD countries. Surely, it's not because all those other countries pay such generous allowances to the over-16s who stay on in education and training?

"Last year [2004], a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that Britain came seventh from bottom in a league table of staying-on rates [in education and training] for 19 countries. Only Mexico and Turkey had significantly lower rates of participation for this age group. Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Slovakia have marginally lower rates."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,16086,1555547,00.html

According to this recent news item:

"Nearly one in five UK 16 and 17-year-olds are Neets - those neither in employment, education or training - a study seen by the BBC suggests. Official figures say such youths make up 7% of their age group in England."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7515042.stm

The trouble brewing, of course, is that jobs for yoof without skills and with literacy and numeracy problems are becoming increasingly scarce. Perhaps someone could, please, remind me, what was all that stuff around the time of the election in 1997 about a New Deal for youth financed by a one-off Windfall Tax on excessive profits?

[Darren P.]

'The trouble brewing, of course, is that jobs for yoof without skills and with literacy and numeracy problems are becoming increasingly scarce.'

Jobs are scarce full stop- even if you possess a degree in any form of engineering, you will struggle to find a job given (unless you possess the necessary ebullience and flair to work in the Financial Services Industry or be a Management Consultant- and these will too soon dry up). In many communities, these kids are not stupid and they will be increasingly adept to the number of graduates returning from university to either work in unskilled work or go on the dole queue, such is the shortfall in suitable work.

These kids will therefore hardly be enthused, and will just see the additional 2 years as further abstainment from either a mediocre career path, or from the dole queue.

[martha]

well i think cutting police budget isn't a solution. Raising budget for education is no doubt a good move but police is also an important depart of a town.

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well i think cutting police budget isn't a solution. Raising budget for education is no doubt a good move but police is also an important depart of a town.

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