Professor Ross’s research has been featured in a Washington Post blog post: “How segregated schools turn kids into criminals“.

The research, with coauthors Dave Deming and Steve Billings, examines youth crime in Charlotte, NC, and finds that having more kids of similar age, gender and race nearby raises the likelihood of arrest, but only if those kids attend the same school.  Further, these kids are more likely to be arrested together as criminal partners if they live very nearby and attend the same school.

These effects are largest when these youth have been in the same neighborhood for a longer time and if they attended the same elementary school. These findings suggest that neighborhood spillovers in criminal activity are likely caused by social interactions that arise within schools, and that school level interventions may be effective in mitigating neighborhood level clusters of crime.

 

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