Better Schools, Less Crime?

I estimate the e ect of attending a rst-choice middle or high school on young adult criminal activity, using data from public school choice lotteries in CharlotteMecklenburg school district (CMS). Seven years after random assignment, lottery winners have been arrested for fewer and less serious crimes, and have spent fewer days incarcerated. Lottery winners attended schools that were higher quality according to measures of peer and teacher inputs, as well as revealed preference, and the gain was roughly equivalent to switching from one of the lowest ranked schools to one at the district average. The reduction in crime persists through the end of the sample period, several years after enrollment in the preferred school is complete. The e ects are concentrated among African-American males whose ex ante characteristics de ne them as high risk. As a result the CMS lottery assignment system, which gave priority to disadvantaged applicants, probably reduced crime relative to a simple lottery like those implemented by many U.S. charter schools. ∗Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK St., Cambridge MA 02139 (email: [email protected]). I would like to thank Lawrence Katz, Susan Dynarski, Brian Jacob, and Sandy Jencks for reading drafts of this paper and providing essential guidance and feedback. I bene ted from the helpful comments of Josh Angrist, Amitabh Chandra, Roland Fryer, Alex Gelber, Josh Goodman, Bridget Long, Jens Ludwig, Erzo Luttmer, Juan Saavedra, Bruce Western, Tristan Zajonc and seminar participants at the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) series at Harvard University, the American Education Finance Assocation (AEFA) meetings, the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, and the University of Michigan. Special thanks to Tom Kane, Justine Hastings and Doug Staiger for generously sharing their lottery data, and to Eric Taylor and Andrew Baxter for help with matching the student and arrest record les. I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Julius B. Richmond Fellowship at the Center for the Developing Child and the Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy at Harvard. Web: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/∼deming/.