Relationship Between Crime And Education

The battle for crime control is a constant one. In this paper, evidence is provided on the factual connection between crime and education. Researchers from various branches – sociology, political science, and economics – have come to the conclusion that varying the levels of educational attainments can eventually lead to a significant decrease in the crime rate. Criminal activity is negatively associated with higher levels of education. Improving education can yield significant social benefits and can be a key tool in the drive to crime reduction. Spending more time in school means less time spent on the street, committing crime. Educated people attach a higher value to their future, and are less likely to engage in risky or violent activities

At the same time, as education expands, youth crime falls, a thing that reveals a cross-cohort relationship between crime and education. The education boost also impacts significantly other productivity-related economic variables (qualification attainment and wages), demonstrating that the effect of additional time spent in school is not always the sole driver of the results, but it is also likely that school quality and the type of schools students attend also affect criminal behavior. While there are no studies that directly estimate the effects of measured school quality on crime, some recent studies on school choice and desegregation provide some useful insights. A few recent statistics from Europe and the United States highlight the strong connection between education and crime. In 1997, 75 percent of state and 59 percent of federal prison inmates in the US did not have a high school diploma (Harlow 2003).1 In 2001, more than 75 percent of convicted persons in Italy had not completed high school (Buonanno and Leonida 2006), while incarceration rates among men ages 21-25 in the United Kingdom were more than eight times higher for those without an education qualification (i.e.

What should persuade policymakers is that other approaches to improve public safety have so far failed. Many governments in the region have adapted “tough-on-crime” approaches based on punishment and segregation of specific groups of the population, which have done more harm than good. Instead of trying to address the root causes, governments lowered the age of penal responsibility, increased the severity of punishments and introduced changes in youth detention centers emphasizing police control and punishment over rehabilitation or education. Even with the best will in the world, Latin America’s traditional criminal justice institutions have been so beset by infrastructure problems that they have been unable to implement consistent policies, and they remain particularly ill-suited to address law and order challenges related to youth violence. Could improvements in education, particularly