This post was first published as an op-ed in Nexo Jornal and has been translated from the original Portuguese.
Quantitative studies conducted in the U.S. and Brazil show investments in education and job opportunity creation can act as methods for decreasing violence.
In 2017, Brazil witnessed the highest number of violent deaths in the world—approximately 60,000 people were killed. More people have died violently in Brazil in the last decade than in many of the civil wars that have occurred in this same period. Most of the victims are young, black men and residents of poor neighborhoods, and half of the deaths of young people aged 15 to 29 in Brazil today are caused by murders. The economic and social cost of this tragedy is exorbitant, as shown by the work of economists Daniel Cerqueira and Rodrigo Soares.
How can we stop this massacre?
Brazil is moving toward a massive, U.S.-style prison policy. The total number of people incarcerated already exceeds 750,000, and more than half of this population is made up of young people between the ages of 18 and 29.
This seems to be the wrong way to do things. In the U.S., increased incarceration does not appear to have led to decreases in crime and violence.
In addition, reforms that could lower the age of criminal responsibility are being discussed, with the hope that increasing the prospect of incarceration will disincentive crime. However, existing evidence from Brazil suggests that there is no significant reduction in homicides once young people pass the age of 18 and can be judged as adults.
In a country of weak institutions and high collusion between police forces and organized crime, the incarceration policy strengthens organized crime groups that dominate prisons. This is likely to lead to the formation of a new generation of criminals, imposing high costs to society, as suggested by political scientist Ben Lessing.
Alternative policies that alienate young people from crime need to be urgently tested. But what policies are these?
To start, instead of spending resources on more prisons and prisoners, we could dedicate resources to expanding our schools and improving their quality. For instance, a policy that increased school hours for young people in Chile significantly reduced youth crime. Preliminary results suggest that the Mais Educação Program (created in 2007) may have had similar results in the Brazilian context.
David Deming (Harvard Kennedy School) studied the relationship between school quality and criminality in the United States. In evaluating education programs, it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between school quality and crime because the neighborhoods with the worst schools also tend to be those with less access to quality public services, where poorer people live. Therefore, it is difficult to know what causes crime: whether it is the poor-quality schools or the fact that young people in these neighborhoods have low socioeconomic status.
But in some U.S. locations, like Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, when there is excess demand for a good school, the choice is made by a lottery. In a paper published in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2011, called "Better Schools, Less Crime?”, David Deming uses these lotteries to evaluate what happens to young people who study (at random) in better schools compared to those who study in poor-quality schools. Seven years after the lottery, he found that individuals who attended better schools were 50 percent less likely to commit a crime.
School-focused policies will have no effect, however, if young people drop out of school. A second type of policy seeks to provide opportunities for young people in the labor market. Recent research shows that employment programs targeted to young people, even temporary ones, can significantly reduce crime.
Economists Alexander Gelber, Adam Isen, and Judd Kessler evaluated the New York City Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP)—the largest of its kind in the United States, serving 34,000 young people annually. In a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2015, they leveraged the lotteries conducted to select program participants—since there was excess demand—to evaluate the program’s impacts. They show that SYEP led to a 10 percent drop in juvenile incarceration and an 18 percent decrease in mortality, compared to those that enrolled in the program but were not randomly selected to participate.
Professor Sara Heller (University of Pennsylvania) and co-authors evaluated the effects of a similar program in Chicago called One Summer Chicago Plus (OSC +). The program focuses on young people who attend schools with high levels of violence and guarantees paid employment—paying minimum wage—in an NGO or government program for eight weeks over the summer. She found that summer employment led to a 43 percent drop in violent crime arrests.
Notably, the impact of the program comes not only from the effect of keeping young people busy through employment. Even 13 months after the program ended, young people who had participated in summer work had a significantly lower chance of being arrested for violent crimes.
In Brazil, several NGOs are actively working on programs targeted towards at-risk youth, but few have been quantitatively evaluated to assess their effects on crime prevention. In addition, the federal government implements a range of programs that seek to help young people enter into the formal labor market, such as Lei do Aprendiz (“Apprentice Law”)—which requires all large- and medium-size companies to have 5 to 15 percent of their workforce comprised of apprentices—young people between 14 and 24 years old.
In a recent evaluation, economists Carlos Henrique Corseuil and Miguel Foguel (Institute of Applied Economic Research), and Gustavo Gonzaga (Pontifical Catholic University, Rio) found the program significantly increased the chances of young people getting a job in the formal sector up until five years after the program.
Brazil is going through a crime and violence crisis, and the solution will have to come from policies that give more opportunities to young people. More and better schools and access to the labor market are the only weapons we have to compete with organized crime. The intensification of the use of force, whether through the police or the Army, will always be a palliative policy—a consequence of our failure as a society to provide more equal opportunities for our youth.
Numerous summer jobs programs in the United States seek to support the employment of young people facing barriers to employment and opportunity. Researchers studied the impact of the New York City Summer Youth Employment Program (which used a lottery to determine participation) on youth earnings, employment, college enrollment, incarceration, and mortality. Although the program increased earnings and employment during the year of participation, it caused a modest decrease in earnings in subsequent years and had no effect on college enrollment. The program also decreased the incarceration and mortality rates of program participants.
In the United States, numerous government policies and programs—from federal tax credits to municipal summer jobs programs—support the employment of young people facing barriers to employment and opportunity. These programs have multiple goals, including providing supplemental income to low-income youth, providing work experience that will improve future employment prospects, and reducing criminal or other dangerous activity. However, there is little research on whether summer jobs programs successfully achieve these outcomes, and previous studies of youth employment programs have often found program costs to outweigh benefits.
Researchers studied participants in the New York City Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) from 2005 to 2008. At the time, SYEP was the largest summer youth employment program in the United States, providing summer jobs to, on average, more than 34,000 youths at a cost of approximately $59 million each year. SYEP placed participants in entry-level jobs and paid them the minimum wage for working up to 25 hours per week for up to seven weeks. To be eligible for the program, youth had to be between 14 and 21 years old and meet work eligibility requirements. The city contracted community-based organizations to match participants with employers and provide approximately 17.5 hours of workshops to participants on job readiness, career exploration, financial literacy, and opportunities to continue their education. The community-based organizations placed nearly half of the participants at summer camps and day care centers. Participants were also placed with various government entities and other private sector firms.
In January 2005, the first year of the study, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in New York City was 6 percent. The unemployment rate fell slightly until January 2008 and then rose sharply during the Great Recession, reaching a high of 10.5 percent in January 2010 before slowly declining again, largely consistent with national trends.
Researchers studied the impact of SYEP on the earnings, employment, college enrollment, incarceration, and mortality of the participating youth. The program received more applications than jobs available, so participation was determined by lottery. Over the study period, 294,100 qualifying applications for SYEP were received, out of which 164,641 were selected for the program and 129,459 were not selected.
The city ran a lottery to determine who would be offered a job sponsored by the program. After the initial lotteries, subsequent lotteries were conducted to fill the slots of initial winners who did not participate until all slots were filled. Applicants could re-apply in subsequent years, regardless of whether they had previously participated in the program.
The researchers linked several administrative datasets, including program application records, Internal Revenue Service data, cause of death data, and incarceration data, to track the applicants' outcomes.
SYEP increased earnings during the year of the program and led to a meaningful reduction in participant incarceration and mortality. The program modestly reduced near-term subsequent earnings and had little impact on subsequent employment or college enrollment.
Earnings and Employment: Participants earned an average of $1,085 through SYEP. Participating in the summer jobs program reduced income from other sources by an average of $209 during the year of the program, meaning that participants earned an average of $876 more during that year.
SYEP participation lowered earnings of participants by approximately $100 per year for the three years after participating in the program. This effect was concentrated among participants placed in day care centers, summer camps, or similar jobs, and participants who may have had higher than average employment prospects, such as older participants and participants employed the year prior to SYEP participation. This suggests that SYEP participation may have displaced employment in jobs that could have led to higher subsequent earnings in the short run. SYEP did not significantly impact earnings subsequent to three years following participation.
During the year of participation, the program increased the probability of having a job by 71 percentage points but had minimal impact on employment thereafter. SYEP had no significant impact on college attendance.
Incarceration and Mortality: SYEP participation significantly decreased the probability of incarceration and mortality. Participants were 0.10 percentage points less likely to be incarcerated, a 10 percent reduction from the baseline incarceration rate of 0.99 percent, implying 112 fewer incarcerations. There was a decline in mortality of 0.073 percentage points, a 18 percent reduction from a baseline of 0.41 percent, equating to 83 fewer deaths. A decline in the incarceration and mortality rates of males accounted for the bulk of these declines. Researchers suggest that the reduction in deaths may be substantially attributable to a decline in death from homicide. The high cost of preventable death and incarceration suggest that a reduction in these outcomes may substantially affect cost-benefit assessments of summer youth employment programs.
In the United States, youth growing up in neighborhoods with a history of violence are disproportionately likely to be both victims and perpetrators of violent crime. Although many policymakers believe that joblessness contributes to violence, evaluations of most traditional employment programs have found little effect on crime among youth. Researchers tested whether a summer jobs program for youth still in school, which shifted focus from remediation to prevention, could impact rates of violent-crime arrests in poor neighborhoods of Chicago. Youth who received an offer of summer employment and mentorship had lower rates of violent-crime arrests throughout the following year.
Every day, acts of violence injure more than 6,000 people in the United States. These incidents disproportionately involve youth growing in neighborhoods with a history of violence; young people are twice as likely as adults to be both victims and perpetrators of violent crime. Many policymakers believe that joblessness contributes to the cycle of violence by increasing stress, weakening social bonds, and giving an individual “less to lose.” However, most evaluations of public employment and training programs—a common policy response—have found no effects on youth criminal behavior. Summer job programs hold promise as a shorter-term, lower-cost way to develop youths’ skills and help them learn how to navigate a work environment, giving them more options for the future. Programs that target youth while they are still in school may be more effective than remedial interventions after they are already out of school and struggling in the labor market. Can placing youth in a summer job affect their rates of violent crime?
Researchers partnered with One Summer Plus (OSP), a public summer jobs program in Chicago. OSP partners with local community organizations to place youth in nonprofit and government jobs (such as camp counselors, community garden workers, or office assistants).
Study participants were 8th to 12th grade students in high-violence Chicago schools , ranging in age from 14 to 21 years. Over 90 percent were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and almost all were African-American. Students came from neighborhoods with a history of disinvestment and with high rates of unemployment, poverty, and violent crime. On average, participants had missed six weeks of school during the previous year and had grade point averages around a 2.3 (on a 4.0-point scale). About 20 percent had been previously been arrested.
Researchers partnered with OSP to evaluate the effects of an eight-week summer job program on violent crime rates among youth. Researchers randomly assigned 1,634 program applicants to one of three groups:
Jobs only: OSP offered youth 25 hours per week of employment in a nonprofit or government job, paid at Illinois’ minimum wage (US$8.25 per hour at the time of this study). OSP also assigned youth to a job mentor—designated adults who made regular visits to the workplace—at a ratio of ten students per mentor. Mentors helped students learn how to be successful employees and how to navigate barriers to employment such as transportation, family responsibilities, and conflicts with supervisors.
Jobs and Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) training: OSP offered youth paid employment at minimum wage in a nonprofit or government job and assigned them to a mentor. However, instead of 25 hours per week of work, they were paid for 15 hours per week of work and 10 hours per week of SEL training. SEL is a curriculum based on cognitive behavioral therapy principles that teaches youth to understand and manage the thoughts, emotions, and behavioral tendencies that might interfere with employment (for example, the inclination to snap defensively at someone offering constructive criticism).
Comparison group: OSP did not offer youth employment or mentorship.
Researchers used administrative records from Chicago Public Schools from the 2011-2012 school year to examine student characteristics before the start of the summer program. After the program’s end, researchers matched administrative records from the 2012-2013 school year with arrest records from the Chicago Police Department. Researchers examined the program’s impact on schooling outcomes the following academic year and arrests through 16 months after random assignment.
Youth who received an offer of summer employment through OSP (both jobs-only and jobs with SEL) were less likely to be involved in violent crime. For each 100 youth offered employment, four fewer were arrested for violent crimes relative to youth who received no job offer (a 43 percent decrease ). The program had no effect on other types of arrests , and there was no change in school attendance.
Results indicate that the decrease in violent-crime arrests is not simply an “incapacitation” effect of youth having less free time to engage in crime over the summer: Most of the reduction in violent-crime arrests occurred after the end of the program. The decline persisted 13 months later, suggesting that youths’ summer experiences impacted their behavior after the program.
While both program groups showed declines in violent-crime arrests, substituting SEL training for work hours had no additional effect. Thus, any behavior change is likely due to an aspect of the jobs program included in both interventions. For example, youth in both groups may have learned interpersonal skills from mentors, or the work experience itself may have improved their self-control and developed confidence.
Results suggest that a well-targeted, low-cost summer job program can impact youth violence, and that such programs may be more effective by focusing on prevention rather than remediation.
