Why do juveniles commit crime? New Evidence from England's linked administrative data

Lead Research Organisation: London School of Economics and Political Science
Department Name: Centre for Economic Performance

Abstract

Youth violence has been widely discussed recently in the UK. Recent estimates from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that fatal stabbings and youth violence have hit a record high in England and Wales since the Home Office Homicide Index began in 1946. However, the origins, motivations and dynamics of youth crime are not well understood. Advancing our understanding of youth crime in the UK and offering coherent policy advice based on a robust evidence base is a priority for research, policy and policing.
This research project brings together academics from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and it applies analytical methods to the linked dataset from the UK Department for Education (DfE) and the UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ). This extremely rich dataset enables linking of criminal records of juveniles with information on their educational trajectory on a national scale, providing the rare opportunity to advance our understanding of youth violence and help the design of informed policing and policy responses. By partnering and using interactively the extremely rich information contained in the linked DfE-MoJ dataset, the LSE and GMP teams aim to make a significant advancement to the current understanding of the origins and dynamics of youth crime, and to help translate the findings of this research into concrete evidence-based policy and policing practices that can help prevent youth crime in GMP and other UK police forces.
The benefit provided by this research relates directly to the core mission of the Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK), and we wish to apply to the ADR UK 'Strategic Research' Invite-Only Scheme. We need funding from ADR UK to produce rigorous evidence on the root causes of youth crime and to derive policy-relevant findings. This is a research priority for the current UK Government and demand from the current UK Government to use the research for the public good is reflected by its large investment (£200 million GBPs) in the Youth Endowment Fund. Both the short- and long-term causes of youth crime will be studied, including the educational experience of pupils, the length of exposure to compulsory schooling, and exposure to schooling programmes aimed at boosting human capital such as the Literacy and Numeracy Hour programmes. The methodological details of these research projects are provided in the Case for Support attached to this application.
By partnering with CEP (LSE), GMP wants to adopt a bold, innovative approach to tackle youth crime over the long term. While part of our analysis investigates policies from the early 2000s, we would like to analyse these to learn from the past and derive policing prescriptions for today. We will frequently exchange knowledge and we will advance a sustainable partnership, thus ensuring the use of the linked DfE-MoJ administrative dataset is maximised. We will involve analysts from GMP, ADR UK, DfE, Home Office and MoJ since the early stages of research creation, and we are willing to collaborate with ADR UK to modify our research effort and working practices in order to best suit the ADR UK's needs and priorities. The familiarity of GMP with the dynamics of youth crime in the UK and the analytical capacity of the LSE team will allow us to exploit the full potential of the linked DfE-MoJ dataset, advance our knowledge and understanding of the roots of youth crime, and enable vital research that has the potential to improve policing services in a sustainable manner. We will disseminate our findings to other UK Police Forces as widely as possible, as we expect the lessons learnt from this collaboration to apply also to other settings in the UK and provide guidance in deciding on policing responses to youth violence also elsewhere, thus ultimately ensuring the societal impact of this research.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Description Collaboration between CEP (LSE) and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) 
Organisation Greater Manchester Police
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
PI Contribution This ongoing research project brings together academics from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to study youth crime in detail using the linked dataset from the UK Department for Education (DfE) and the UK Ministry of Justice (MoJ). By partnering with GMP and applying analytical methods in a novel way to the linked DfE-MoJ dataset, we will make a significant advancement to our understanding of the origins and dynamics of youth crime, and we will help translate our findings into concrete evidence-based policing practices that can help prevent youth crime in GMP and other police forces in the UK. The benefit provided by this research collaboration relates directly to the core mission of the Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK). The project will provide rigorous evidence on the impact of the educational experience on youth crime in England, allowing us to retrieve a set of policy relevant findings that will allow a discussion of "what works". By quantifying the impact of a new set of education policies on youth crime using the MoJ-DfE linked data set, this project will build and advance on the existing empirical literature on the economics of education and crime, as well as specifically on the work by Rosie Cornish (Bristol) and her team, that have assessed the feasibility of evaluating violence interventions using the MoJ-DfE linked data set. We will build on this effort to examine the crime-reducing effects of a new, specific set of education policies using the MoJ-DfE linked data set. The set of education policies that is studied here is described in detail below. First, we will study the impact of the introduction of the Literacy and Numeracy Hour programmes in the late 1990s on youth crime and permanent exclusion. These initiatives aimed to raise the poor standards of English teaching and to improve the literacy and numeracy standards of primary school children. The Literacy Hour was first introduced in 268 inner-city primary schools (ending at age 11) in two waves, beginning in September 1996 and September 1997 in the context of the National Literacy Project (NLP). Most LEAs, though not all, were selected to participate in the NLP where perceived pupil performance was generally low, and then schools were selected within them. Similarly, the Numeracy Hour was introduced in three waves from September 1996 to September 1999 into 468 inner-city primary schools, through an initiative known as the National Numeracy Project. Subsequently, the Literacy and Numeracy Hour programmes were rolled-out nationally to all English schools, through the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies (NLS and NNS). In our analysis, as children in some schools were exposed to the Literacy and Numeracy Hour programmes in years when children in similar schools were not, we will exploit empirically the spatial variation in the timing of exposure to these programmes, use regression analysis, define a set of difference-in-differences specifications and, thus, quantify the causal impact of the Literacy and Numeracy hour programmes on school exclusion and youth crime. Second, we will study the impact of the recent school leaving age reforms on youth crime in England. Since 1972/3, the school leaving age in England was 16, until it was raised to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015. At present, English juveniles must stay in school until age 16, then must either remain in school or enrol in vocational training or apprenticeship until age 18. A novel feature of these reforms is they were not implemented at the same time on the entire national territory. Thus, we propose to exploit this variation to study the impact of these reforms on youth crime. Indeed, although compulsory schooling reduces overall crime, violence and student victimization may increase (e.g., on the school premises) when juveniles are forced to attend school. We will use regression analysis and we will define a set of difference-in-differences specifications to exploit empirically the time window between regions that implemented the school leaving age reforms earlier and regions that implemented them later. We will check robustness of our conclusions producing also regression-discontinuity estimates, whereby we will control linearly in a regression setting for the date of birth of juveniles, and we will estimate the discontinuous likelihood to engage in delinquent behaviour of juveniles born close to the date determining eligibility to the school leaving age reform. Third, we will examine the impact of secondary school attendance on the day-to-day opportunity and desire to commit crime. To this end, we will exploit variation across schools in their teacher training (INSET) dates when schools remain closed and teachers and other school staff undertake training. Since every school has the power to decide independently when to hold an INSET date, natural variation exists between schools and across years in the dates when juveniles are allowed to stay home from school. We will collect data on INSET dates for all secondary schools in England and exploit variation in their timing across schools to examine whether juveniles are more likely to commit crime when schooling is off. This, in turn, will allow us to understand whether just a few days off from school can influence the risk of committing crime and therefore whether policy should intervene accordingly. We will use regression analysis and we will produce a series of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates regressing the delinquent behaviour of a juvenile on a given date on whether the school attended by the same juvenile is open or not on the same day.
Collaborator Contribution This ongoing project has enabled the interactive exchange of knowledge and the advancement of a sustainable partnership between LSE and GMP. CEP (LSE) applicants will be exposed to GMP's in-depth and up-to-date knowledge of the dynamics of youth crime in England; indeed, Greater Manchester constitutes an ideal context to conduct research and derive policy prescriptions that apply to the entire country as the socio-economic makeup of Greater Manchester is broadly comparable to the country at large. GMP will benefit from CEP (LSE)'s rigorous analysis of the DfE-MoJ dataset, which will allow novel insights into the underlying issues of youth violence. This will help GMP, working closely with LSE, to formulate timely and evidence-based policing strategies to address the pressing social issues generated by youth crime. By partnering with CEP (LSE), GMP wants to build on LSE's analytical capacity to adopt a bold, innovative approach to tackle youth crime and violence over the long term. This has required us to apply analytical methods in a collaborative partnership. The familiarity of GMP with the pressing issues of youth crime in the UK will allow us to exploit the full potential of the linked DfE-MoJ dataset and enable vital research that has the potential to lead in a sustainable manner to better informed policy decisions and more effective public services: this is a policy priority and there is evidence of demand for this research by the current UK government, as reflected by its large investment in the Youth Endowment Fund to tackle youth crime. As the lessons from this collaboration also apply to other settings in the UK and elsewhere, this effort will also encourage other UK police forces to adopt novel, evidence-based practices to prevent youth crime. GMP will enable the interactive exchange of knowledge and the advancement of a sustainable partnership between CEP (LSE) and GMP. GMP has provided guidance to CEP (LSE) investigators on the main challenges in policing to address youth violence, and the CEP (LSE) team have shared research findings with GMP since the early phase of the analysis and up until completion of the grant. CEP (LSE) investigators and GMP officers travel between London and Manchester to participate in meetings, as well as academic and non-academic presentations. To this end, LSE researchers are most welcome at GMP, as has been the case for the last seven years since when we had formed the LSE/GMP partnership first. LSE researchers have access to the GMP premises, and results have been presented, discussed and compared against the policing expertise of GMP since the preliminary phase of the analysis. Interactive feedback will be sought at all stages of the analysis via the production of descriptive statistics, non-technical reports, slides' presentation, as well as through formal and informal meetings on the GMP premises in Manchester and on the LSE premises in London. We have experience of doing this as we have done it already with multiple UK police forces already.
Impact No publishable outputs have resulted from this collaboration as part of this project yet, as the project is still ongoing.
Start Year 2021
 
Description Administrative Data Workshop MoJ DfE Research Fellows 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact I presented my proposed research project at the Administrative Data Workshop organised by the ESRC/UKRI for the current pool of MoJ/DfE Research Fellows.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description ESRC/UKRI Public Engagement Workshop, 25 January 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact I presented my research project to data providers, policymakers, professional practitioners and other external organizations at the Public Engagement Workshop organised by the ESRC/UKRI on the 25 January 2022.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description MoJ Data First - 5th Academic Seminar 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact On the 9th March 2022, I participated in a discussion panel with Jemma Gardner (DfE) and Kirby King (MoJ) on evidence data gaps in relation with the DfE/MoJ dataset that is used for this project. This was part of the MoJ Data First - 5th Academic Seminar on the 9th March 2022.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022