In School and Out of Trouble? Investigating the Effects of Furloughing Public School Teachers on Juvenile Crime in Hawaii

Due to the large social costs of juvenile crime, policymakers have long been concerned about its causes. In the 2009-10 school year, the State of Hawaii responded to fiscal strains by furloughing all school teachers employed by the Department of Education and canceling class for seventeen instructional days. We examine the effects of this unusually short school year to draw conclusions about the relationship between time in school and juvenile arrests on Oahu. We calculate marginal effects from a negative binomial model and find that time off from school is associated with significantly fewer juvenile assault and drug-related arrests, although there are no changes in other types of crimes, such as burglaries. During the shortened school year, we calculate that there were twenty fewer assault arrests and fourteen fewer drug-related arrests of juveniles on Oahu. The declines in arrests for assaults were the most pronounced in poorer regions of the island whereas the declines in drug-related arrests were higher in relatively more prosperous regions.