Juvenile Crime and the Four-Day School Week

Little is known regarding the extent to which school changes youth criminal behavior in the short-term, if at all, and even less in known on this issue in rural areas. We leverage a unique policy, the adoption of the four-day school week across rural counties and years in Colorado, a school schedule that is becoming more common nationwide especially in rural areas, to examine the causal link between school and youth crime. Those affected by the policy spend the same number of hours in school each week as students on a typical fiveday week, however treated students have Friday off. This policy allows us to learn about two aspects of the school-crime relationship that have previously been unstudied; one, the effects of a more frequent and long lasting schedule change on short-term crime, and two, the impact that school has on youth crime in rural areas. Our difference-in-difference estimates indicate that switching all students in a county from a five-day week to a four-day week increases juvenile arrests for property crimes, in particular larceny, by about 73%. We show that larceny and property crimes increase on all days of the week and are not driven by crime shifting from one day to another, i.e. Wednesday to Friday.