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Full day schooling crime reductions concentrate on school hours: evidence from São Paulo, Brazil

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  • Alves, Augusto
  • Pantaleão, Bruno
  • Santos, Alei

Abstract

We examine the mechanisms through which full-time schooling reduces crime, exploiting the staggered rollout of São Paulo’s Integral Education Program (2012 - 2024) using a difference-in-differences estimator. Full-time school adoption reduces property crime by 18.8 incidents per hexagon-year (7%), driven primarily by robbery. Crucially, effects are temporally concentrated: robbery falls 12.1% during school hours versus 8.8% outside them, and theft falls 25.8% during school hours while increasing 4.2% outside. This pattern provides direct evidence for an incapacitation mechanism—crime reduction is largest when school supervision is most direct. Underage-perpetrator crimes are reduced disproportionately (65% for theft, 23% for robbery), indicating school-based supervision particularly deters youth. Full-time schooling operates primarily through direct supervision rather than longer-run opportunity-cost mechanisms, a finding relevant for developing country policy

Suggested Citation

  • Alves, Augusto & Pantaleão, Bruno & Santos, Alei, 2026. "Full day schooling crime reductions concentrate on school hours: evidence from São Paulo, Brazil," SocArXiv 8a6t7_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:8a6t7_v1
    DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/8a6t7_v1
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